Identification of a new failure criterion for toughened epoxy adhesive

The increasing use of structural adhesive in industry leads to the need of a detailed failure criterion. In this paper, a structural adhesive especially designed for automotive crashworthiness applications named BETAMATE 1496V™ is studied. The authors propose a new failure criterion based on an equivalent failure strain which evolves with the triaxiality stress ratio and the strain rate. This criterion is identified by means of new measurement techniques on a large range of strain rates and for different loadings like tensile, shear and compressive.