Are probabilistic methods a way to get rid of fudge factors? Part II: Application and examples

Dimensioning adhesively bonded joints remains a challenging task. Their diversity in geometry and material (including combinations thereof), characteristic stress peaks, scatter and brittleness are aspects few practitioners are prepared to handle for dimensioning purposes. As developed in the first part of this two-part paper, direct stress based methods, despite diverse fudging techniques, proved to be unsuitable. This left the field open for fracture mechanics, which, however, departed very much from the engineering reality leading to only lukewarm acceptance from practitioners. Almost unnoticed, probabilistic methods, much closer to classical mechanics, may offer an alternative. Based upon the presentation, in the first part of this series, of the concepts, the authors suggested an implementation in terms of design procedure. The second part of this two-part paper, is dedicated to the presentation of several examples, from available literature, of adhesively bonded joints involving a large variety of typologies (single and double-lap, tubular, and hybrid joints) and materials (fibre-reinforced polymers, steel, wood). The focus therein is set on practitioner oriented aspects, in particular on techniques for implementation.