The use of structural adhesives to bond composites and light weight alloys is now well established within the aerospace and automotive industries. The prediction of the strength of adhesively bonded joints has been investigated using a variety of failure criteria such as maximum stress or strain, and fracture mechanics approaches. Fracture mechanics approaches based on the critical strain energy release rate, for crack propagation are applicable to highly cross-linked structural adhesives and have the advantage of avoiding the explicit consideration of the bi-material singularities inherent in adhesive joints. In the present work, the finite-element (FE) simulation of such adhesive joint has been performed and the R-curves of two different rubber-toughened epoxy adhesives were measured using double cantilever beam (DCB) specimens. The FE results are applied to be compared with the experimental results which were reported in the literature.

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