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Interface debonding is one of the major failure modes for the adhesive joints of polymer–matrix composites. The interfacial fracture properties of adhesive interfaces involving large-scale yielding is difficult to determine. A hybrid method that combines modified data reduction and inverse analysis was used to determine the fracture energy of the composite propellant/insulation interface at different loading rates. The modified data reduction adopts effective crack length to account for the effect of the fracture progress zone and avoid monitoring the crack length. These estimated values of the fracture energy were then calibrated by inverse analysis based on the Hooke–Jeeves algorithm in which the interface layer is characterized by a cohesive zone model. The whole process of inverse analysis is conducted automatically without any intervention by procedures. Experimental and numerical results indicate that the proposed data reduction provided fracture energy sufficiently similar to those obtained by the inverse analysis. Moreover, the fracture energy of the propellant/insulation interface was found to rely heavily on the loading rate with a non-monotonic trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]