Peel Strength Of The Brazed Stainless Steel Joint

Compared with traditional shell and tube heat exchangers, compact plate-fin heat exchangers made of brazed stainless steel have advantages of superior heat transfer capability, small size and low cost, and it has been widely used in industry. In the practical application of the plate-fin heat exchanger, the load has a peel force for the plate-fin structure, and this process is very similar to the glued joint and composite stratified cracking.The purpose of this study is to evaluate the failure process of plate-fin structure by using the glued joint and composite peel test as well as finite element method. It provides a certain reference for the rational design of equipment including such plate-fin structure. The main contents of this paper are as follows:(1) T-peel test was carried out on the standard sample and the curve of the peel force-displacement was obtained. The maximum and average peel strength were acquired by analysis of the peel curve.(2) T-peel test with different sizes of the sample was executed, and the effects of steel plate width, plate thickness and peel arm length on the maximum peel strength were investigated, respectively. The results showed that steel plate width and peel arm length had substantially no effect; maximum peel strength and steel plate thickness were a linear relationship.(3) The numerical simulation of standard sample T-peel test using the cohesion force model of ABAQUS was conducted, and the peel force-displacement curve was achieved. It was found that the curve fitted well with the experimental result.(4) The model geometric dimensions were changed using the debugged parameters, and the peel force-displacement curve of every model was obtained. Meanwhile, the rules of steel plate width, the peel arm length and plate thickness influenced on the maximum peel strength are almost the same with that of tests, which confirmed that using the cohesion force model to simulate the peel process of the brazed joint is feasible.(5) The effects of the weld length on the maximum peel strength were investigated using the same parameters to change the model’s size, and the results indicated that the weld length has almost no effect on the maximum strength.