Experimental Verification of Effect of Adhesive Layer Thickness Used for Strain Gauge Mounting

Strain measurement from the strain gauge is partially affected by carrier and adhesive materials and their thickness. Effect of adhesive layer thickness has been addressed in this paper. Well characterized tensile experiments have been conducted using Al 6061-T6 specimens attached with strain gauges at mid length of the specimen and strain gauges are attached with different materials namely epoxy and polyurethane to understand the effect of adhesive layer thickness in strain measurement. The strain at a location has been noted for one particular adhesive layer thickness value (0.13 mm) and similar experiments have been carried out with different adhesive thickness values (0.16 mm, 0.18 mm and 0.26 mm). The results obtained from experiments have been compared with analytical results from Basic Strength of Materials approach. Good agreement is seen between the experimental and analytical results. It has been observed that the thickness of the adhesive layer plays significant role for getting accurate strain.