Owing to many advantages provided by the use of adhesives and glues as joining , protection and sealing system, this type of material or technology is experiencing a huge growth in application in the construction, manufacturing and maintenance fields.
A broad range of fields and industries use adhesives as part of its processes, from using adhesives as a closure system in the packaging industry, to using adhesives as a system for construction of complex structures such as skyscrapers, airplanes, trains or buses.
Actually, without the use of adhesives it would be impossible to produce materials or products that we use in our daily life, such as honeycomb panels used in multiple areas of the construction which provide a extraordinary strength with reduced weight, medical and composite material used in the reconstruction of teeth, office supplies like post-it, etc.
The aerospace area was the first field that promoted the use of adhesives in the aircraft manufacturing process, owing to its excellent advantages over traditional methods such as welding or bolting, and then other industrial fields found in the adhesive material joint solutions and improvements to their products.
In recent years, the automotive industry has experienced a large increase in the use of adhesives. The adhesives are applied in the production process both for joining a car interior parts to form the racks of the car, eliminating some of the welds and rivets, making cars lighter and safer.
As an example and to explain various applications of structural adhesives, the following are several examples where adhesives are used as bonding materials for the construction and manufacture of ground, air and sea vehicles:
Adhesive for bonding structures or racks;
Adhesive for bonding the front, side and rear window glass;
Adhesive for bonding body roof structure;
Adhesive for bonding side panels of the structure;
Adhesive for bonding the floor;
Adhesive for bonding the cabins of the vehicles;
Adhesives for bonding different elements of the equipment.
In addition to the main function of being used to bond substrates, adhesives can be used for other purposes, such as sealing the pipes or other items that require sealing screw fixation so as to eliminate the effect of self-loosening caused by dynamic loads, sealing the areas you that want to prevent oxidation and corrosion, waterproofing, acoustic and electric, etc.