Thermal and Joule effect debonding techniques: Evaluation of mechanical strength and LCA analysis of bonded joints

Bonded joints play a crucial role in various engineering applications, particularly in aerospace, automotive, and structural industries, where they provide lightweight and high-strength connections. However, their permanent nature poses challenges when disassembly is required for maintenance, repair, or recycling. Efficient debonding techniques are essential to enable disassembly while minimizing damage to the substrates, preserving material integrity, and reducing environmental impact. Among the available methods, thermal debonding and Joule heating represent promising approaches, as they allow for localized heating, weakening the adhesive without excessive degradation of the substrate. These techniques leverage controlled temperature increases to reduce the adhesive’s strength, facilitating joint separation. The effectiveness of these methods depends on several factors, including adhesive type, substrate material, and process parameters such as temperature, heating rate, and exposure duration. A comprehensive evaluation of these debonding strategies is essential to identify those that ensure structural integrity, ease of disassembly, and sustainability. This study focuses on thermal and Joule heating debonding techniques applied to aluminium substrates. The selected methods demonstrated a reduction of at least 75% in tensile shear stress at failure, enabling easy hand disassembly. Furthermore, the environmental sustainability of these solutions was assessed through a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to identify the techniques with the lowest environmental impact.