Abstract: For the damaged structure repaired with bonded composite patches, based on the TOM theory, an improved Rose L R F theoretical solution is proposed, in which the shear effect among the skin thickness is considered. The assumption of linear shear stress distributions through the thickness of the skin is adopted in the analysis. The analytical results showed good agreements with the FEM result, which verifies the validity of the proposed analytical model. The effects of the skin thickness on the adhesive shear distributions are presented. It is shown that the improved solutions are more close to numerical results than Rose L R F solution when the thickness of the skin is relatively thin (i.e., the ratio of the thickness to the length is less than 0.1).

Key words: composite repair, center-cracked metal plate, bondline, stress distribution