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  4. Stress mitigation for adhesively bonded photovoltaics with fibre reinforced polymer composites in load carrying applications
 
research article

Stress mitigation for adhesively bonded photovoltaics with fibre reinforced polymer composites in load carrying applications

Dai, Yiqing
•
Bai, Yu  
•
Keller, Thomas  
November 15, 2019
Composites Part B-Engineering

Structural loads, especially in-plane compression, may cause local buckling and debonding of the photovoltaic (PV) cells that are mechanically integrated with structural members and this may lead to degradation in their electrical performance. This paper proposes an approach to mitigate the strains transferred from structural members to PV cells through the partial composite action provided by low-modulus adhesives. Specimens were fabricated by bonding amorphous silicon (a-Si) PV cells to glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) structural components by an adhesive layer of 0.5- or 2.0-mm thickness. Two types of adhesives were used including a two-part rigid epoxy adhesive and a low-modulus silicone adhesive. These integrations were then submitted to inplane compressive loadings. PV cells bonded by the silicone adhesive showed no damages during loading. While for PV cells bonded by epoxy adhesives, obvious electrical performance degradations were observed, when the strain reached 0.62% or 0.23% for specimens bonded by epoxy with a layer thickness of 0.5 mm or 2.0 mm respectively. Debonding and local-buckling of the PV cells were also witnessed. Theoretical analysis was conducted to understand the strain mitigation of the adhesive as a result of the induced partial composite action. Results demonstrate that such strain differences between the GFRP and the bonded PV cell are dominated by the shear modulus and thickness of the adhesive layer as well as elastic modulus, thickness and length of the PV cell. The theoretical analysis was validated by finite element (FE) modelling and design suggestions are provided accordingly.

  • Details
  • Metrics
Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.compositesb.2019.107420
Web of Science ID

WOS:000494052600062

Author(s)
Dai, Yiqing
Bai, Yu  
Keller, Thomas  
Date Issued

2019-11-15

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

Published in
Composites Part B-Engineering
Volume

177

Article Number

107420

Subjects

Engineering, Multidisciplinary

•

Materials Science, Composites

•

Engineering

•

Materials Science

•

building integrated photovoltaics (bipv)

•

fibre reinforced polymer composites

•

solar cell

•

adhesive

•

bonding

•

compression

•

composite action

•

solar-cells

•

mechanical performance

•

light transmittance

•

energy performance

•

amorphous-silicon

•

single-lap

•

joints

•

glass

•

bipv

•

sandwich

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
CCLAB  
Available on Infoscience
November 16, 2019
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/163162
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