A review of finite element analysis of adhesively bonded joints

The need to design lightweight structures and the increased use of lightweight materials in industrial fields, have led to wide use of adhesive bonding. Recent work relating to finite element analysis of adhesively bonded joints is reviewed in this paper, in terms of static loading analysis, environmental behaviors, fatigue loading analysis and dynamic characteristics of the adhesively bonded joints. It is concluded that the finite element analysis of adhesively bonded joints will help future applications of adhesive bonding by allowing system parameters to be selected to give as large a process window as possible for successful joint manufacture. This will allow many different designs to be simulated in order to perform a selection of different designs before testing, which would currently take too long to perform or be prohibitively expensive in practice.