Testing and Inspection of Adhesive Bonds

The most commonly used methods for evaluation of adhesive bonds are mechanical tests such as tensile shear and peel tests that determine the weakest link in a bonded assembly. Although these tests are useful in the development and quality control of adhesives, they are destructive and cannot offer failure prediction for in-service components. Ultrasonic inspection is the most commonly used non-destructive test method and can accurately assess de bonding in single adhesive bonds, providing that the sensor is perpendicular to the defect plane. However, ultrasound has some limitations in 

Automotive companies have used a four-poster road simulator rig with environmental conditioning to establish correlations with conventional adhesive testing methods [71]. 

Abdel Wahab, I.A. Ashcroft and A.D. Crocombe in the Proceedings of the European Adhesives 2002, Glasgow, UK, 2002, Paper 23, 198. 

Verhoff, K. Ramani, N. Blank and S. Rosenberg, Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology, 2002, 16, 4, 373. 

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