Experimental study of cohesive strain prior to crack initiation in constant force single cantilever beam test.

Retarded deformation at the bond line edge of a thick, viscoelastic adhesive layer is observed using digital image correlation. Such information is required for proposing physical crack onset/propagation parameters which take into account viscoelastic and viscous mechanisms in the evaluation of dissipated energy. A complex stress/strain redistribution is observed in the early stage after specimen loading. The results illustrate that viscoelasticity dissipates a considerable amount of energy prior to crack nucleation and the lack of predictive models to account for that phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]