OPTIMAL SPECIMEN DESIGN FOR LAP SHEAR TEST

In the lap-shear test, the failure of specimens is usually caused by the peel stress instead of the shear stress. With the finite element method, the lap-shear test is optimized by designing some notches in the specimen holder so that the uniformity of the shear stress is improved and the peel stress at the two ends of the specimen is reduced. The optimization is verified with the photo-elasticity experiment.