On estimating the tensile strength of an adhesive plastic layer of arbitrary simply connected contour (Q1977255)

Subject of this report is the estimation of tensile strength of an adhesive joint connecting two bodies. The adhesive layer is modelled as a rigid-plastic flat cylinder of arbitrary cross-section. Quite general yield criteria may be taken into account. Based on the principle of virtual work rate and on two admissible velocity fields, upper bounds for the limit load are established in terms of an integral which has to be minimized with respect to one or two parameters. Numerical results are given, and it is stated that they are in good agreement with slip line solutions. A further topic is the study of tensile stress in symmetry plane of the layer. However, this rough estimation is hardly based on continuum mechanics.