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Glue is sort of the wrong word. When you hear glue you maybe imagine the general purpose glue that you can buy, like Elmers glue or Super Glue. This is a chemic
by elil17 7y ago
Glue is sort of the wrong word. When you hear glue you maybe imagine the general purpose glue that you can buy, like Elmers glue or Super Glue. This is a chemical adhesive designed specifically for the surfaces that it's holding together (i.e., they will use a different glue for composite-to-metal bonds than metal-to-metal, etc.) and it's very strong.
Many things you wouldn't expect are glued together. Many weld and rivet connections on cars have been replaced with glue in the last few years.
- chrismorgan 7y agoAnd these bonds can be stronger than the base materials, so that it’s actually least likely to break where you glued it.
- adwn 7y agoCue the obligatory "Then why don't they build the entire plane out of that glue?"
- chrismorgan 7y agoVarious reasons. Chemical bond glues are only strong if there’s something for them to bond to; it’s expensive glue; it’d be much harder to make the entire plane out of that stuff, especially given the desired tolerances; sometimes it has other problems that make it unsuitable, e.g. how it reacts to environmental conditions it’s exposed to; it’d look and sound silly…
- elil17 7y agoI mean, they kind of do. That's what carbon composite is, in a way: thin strands of carbon held together in a mass of resin (glue).