ABSTRACT
The majority of naval vessels at present are constructed from steel; however, the use of more lightweight materials has been under investigation for a number of years. A variety of Fiber-Reinforced Plastic (FRP) single skin or sandwich structural concepts has been widely used until now for building many small and medium sized high speed craft. Besides, FRP applications are recently also introduced in components of larger ships, the main reason for this being the demand for fast vessels in which light weight is essential (Baker 1984, Baker et al. 1993). The application of general hybrid metal-to-composite structures has been gaining momentum over the last number of years and their use can be found in a widening number of engineering disciplines. Contributing to this fact is a long list of advantages offered by the adhesive
bonding technology compared to other bonding techniques, like welding or bolting. Adhesive bonding offers the possibility of joining completely dissimilar materials, including metals, independent of their metallurgical properties. The main advantages of adhesive joining is the reduction of the weight of the structure and the superior flexibility in joining dissimilar materials which enables in sequence the designer to choose the most fitting material for each part of the structure. Additionally, adhesives provide vibration isolation and they give no shape distortion, improving the appearance of the structure and avoiding any surface modifications. They also provide galvanic isolation, a fact that reduces corrosion when joining different metals. Finally, a very important factor why adhesive bonding is preferred to other techniques is the better load carrying capability it offers, since the stresses are distributed more uniformly than welding or
bolting (where stress concentration areas are easily observed).
