Repairing a crack in a structure consists in reducing crack’s tips stresses by transferring loads trough a bridge made of the composite patch and the adhesive. This operation is impacted by four factors: shear modulus of the adhesive, the composite patch’s Young module and the thicknesses of these two materials. The design of experiments method allowed us to determine, the weight of each of the four factors and their interactions as well their best combination to obtain an efficient and lasting repair. The constraints relative to the stiffness ratio and the shear strain were taken into consideration in order to determine the best configuration that allowed the minimization of K.
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The lowest value of K∞ is obtained with level -1 for Ep, tp, Ga and level 1 for ta.
Considering constraint related to the stiffness ratio, . The best selection appeared to be the level 0 for both parameters, which correspond to Ep=145 GPa and tp=1mm.
Considering all design constraints the final optimum design is obtained with the level 0 for Ep and tp, the level-1 for Ga and the level 1for ta.