Failure criteria for adhesively bonded joints

Adhesively bonded joints are an alternative structural technique to welded, bolted or riveted joints, presenting better load transfer and stress distributions. Most analytical formulations for stress–strain analysis consider maximum values as failure criteria. Several failure criteria based on fracture mechanics and extensive evaluation of experimental data are also available in literature. The main difficulty with these two criteria is the need to perform numerous tests, resulting in expensive methods and usually applicable to a particular material combination. This paper reviews several linear and non-linear analytical models of stress distributions in adhesively bonded joints. These models were implemented in a user-friendly software. The developed software allows evaluation of stress distributions for each analytical solution and also features the comparison among these solutions and numerical results. Comparison among analytical and numerical analyses was achieved by the interaction between the MATLAB code and ABAQUS models using Python script. Different failure criteria were also reviewed and implemented. The bond strain energy density criteria combine shear and peel effects. Results obtained by these criteria are compared with numerical results and experimental data.