Adhesives are widely used in the automotive industry as they can be used to manufacture lightweight multimaterial structures with improved strength-to-weight ratio, contributing to lower energy consumption and emissions. In this industry, it is also crucial to ensure passengers' safety and, thus, mechanical behavior of the complete automotive structure should be tested for impact conditions, including the adhesive joints within it. This work presents the development of a finite element, which models the mechanical behavior of adhesives and takes into account the strain rate dependent property variation, in mode I. The trends for the property variation were set based on an experimental study of two adhesives under three different loading conditions: quasi-static, intermediate speed, and impact. The strength was determined using bulk tensile tests and toughness using double cantilever beam, respectively. Both adhesives studied have shown an increase in ultimate stress and critical energy release rate with increasing strain rate. The property variation was then implemented on a finite element, which revealed a good agreement with the experimental results.

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International audienceAdhesive joints are being increasingly used as a good solution to assemble primary structures of metallic and composite materials. Hence, the analysis of the behaviour of adhesively-bonded assemblies under mixed loadings is a critical issue for industry. This article discusses the use of the modified Arcan device to identify the strength of adhesively-bonded metal/metal and metal/composite assemblies. Different assemblies have been tested and their failure envelopes have been determined. Moreover, analyses have also been made of the influence of some crucial parameters on the behaviour of the assemblies in the study such as the composite surface state, the fabric orientation, the humidity and the presence of grease

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