ABSTRACT
When an adhesive system must be selected for a specific design, a large battery of tests must be considered. The tests to be performed should include the mechanical properties, evaluation of environmental-durability resistance, and verification of the processing tolerance allowables put forth by the manufacturer. Destructive testing of specimens must be carried out to indicate the quality of adhesive and pretreatment combination used to bond the test specimens, not the surface pretreatment alone. A large number of test specimens with the same pretreatment were tested after different environmental baths. Specific test specimens must be used to verify that the production processing is giving the proper durability and strength results for each production run. The wedge crack test method simulates in a qualitative manner the forces and effects on an adhesively bonded joint at the adhesive-adherend interface. It has proven to be highly reliable in determining and predicting the environmental durability of adherend surface preparations.
