Investigation of impediment factors in commercialization of reinforced adhesives

Abstract

Despite significant advancements in reinforcing material-embedded structural adhesives, the industry still hesitates to employ the new technologies in their production line. In this communication, we investigate what critically hampers the practical application of newly developed reinforcing material-embedded structural adhesives to the industry, and analyze the factors impeding their commercialization from an economic perspective. By dividing mechanical strengths of adhesives by input cost, e.g., material cost and processing cost, we propose an evaluation index that can assess cost effectiveness of adhesives in terms of materials and processing costs, respectively. We found that the cost mainly affecting the impediment of employing reinforcing materials in structural adhesives is the processing cost that mostly consists of labor cost and electricity fees while the materials cost increase has a negligible impact on their cost effectiveness. Based on our analysis considering current materials and processing costs, we finally suggest how much the processing cost needs to be reduced and what the target achievement in mechanical strength enhancement should be in order to cross the cost effectiveness of commercialized structural adhesives.