Stress flow in thin-walled box beams obtained by adhesive bonding joining technology

Research efforts in the field of adhesive bonding have firstly concentrated on the evaluation of the performance of single joints. The single joint performance is generally not sufficient to provide a realistic indication of the performance of structures in service. In fact, it is not possible to evaluate a priori the influence of one or more joints on the stress flow in a component. The present paper takes into consideration two simple thin-walled box beams with different cross sections obtained by using adhesive joints. The box beams are submitted to normal and shear forces, torsional and bending moments separately. The influence of the joint geometry on the stress flow is analysed and some guidelines are obtained in order to identify the optimal joint configuration.