Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

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Engineering Fracture Mechanics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engfracmech

Insights into the micromechanical response of adhesive joint with

stochastic surface micro-roughness
Xing-er Wang a, b, c, Kai Pang a, Xuhao Huang d, Jian Yang b, c, Jianqiao Ye a,
Xiaonan Hou a, *
a
School of Engineering, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YW, UK
b
State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China
c
Shanghai Key Laboratory for Digital Maintenance of Buildings and Infrastructure, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China
d
Key Laboratory of Impact and Safety Engineering, Ministry of Education, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Ningbo University,
Ningbo, 315211, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Micro-roughness at adhesion surface yields significant influences on the structural behaviour of
Discrete element method adhesive joints. Investigations into the micromechanical mechanism are extremely limited. This
Adhesive joint works developed a novel particle-based model of joints with stochastic microstructural features of
Epoxy adhesive
roughness, which can capture refined multi-scale responses as first of this kind. Aluminium
Surface roughness
Microstructures
adherends with mechanical surface treatments were firstly scanned using 3D laser scanning mi­
croscope. The statistical features and reconstruction method of micro-roughness profiles were
determined. Single lap shear tests on joints made of epoxy adhesive (Loctite EA 9497) and treated
aluminium adherends were performed to provide testing data and observations on failure modes.
The refined numerical models were subsequently developed to examine the influences of the
actual micro-roughness on the micromechanical behaviors and failure mechanism. The me­
chanical interlocking, mitigation on crack propagation due to the irregular roughness were
investigated. It is followed by introducing the reconstructed roughness of various magnitudes and
further numerically examining the micromechanical responses by key stochastic parameters such
as root mean square roughness and correlation length. The results indicate that the mechanical
interlocking contribute more to enhancing the joint strength than the increase of adhesion area by
micro-roughness. A rougher surface in either horizontal or vertical directions does not exhibit a
consistent improvement of joint strength, which also depends on the threshold of roughness and
the surface skewness triggering the transition of failure modes.

1. Introduction

In order to improve the cost effectiveness and reduce the carbon emission from advanced industrial products such as vehicles,
aircrafts and high-speed trains, demand on the light-weight products and related manufacture techniques is increasingly proposed
[1,2]. The application of light-weight components has been extended from the non-structural members to that acts as load bearing ones
[3,4]. Popular materials such as polymer-based composites [5], light-weight alloys/metals [6] have drawn great attentions of

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: x.hou2@lancaster.ac.uk (X. Hou).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engfracmech.2022.108954
Received 15 August 2022; Received in revised form 21 October 2022; Accepted 16 November 2022
Available online 22 November 2022
0013-7944/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

researchers from a wide range of sectors. For instance, carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) is widely adopted to make members for
aircrafts. Light-weight aluminum (AL), polyphthalamide (PPA) can be frequently seen in the vehicles. In addition to the material
development and practice, the joining technique is also of significance with considering various factors including the convenience of
manufacturing, the joining weight, joint abilities. Adhesive joining is one of the important techniques as it has strengths such as light
weight, better fatigue resistance, ability to bond different materials [7]. Structural adhesives with various ductility levels are used to
make adhesive joints to suit different service scenarios [8,9].
The joint performance is found to be sensitive to several key factors, e.g., adherend and adhesive properties, adhesive thickness,
surface treatment of adherends, the geometrical design of joint areas [10,11]. The compatibility between adherend and adhesive as
well as the material properties are the predominant factors to determine the joint performance in most occasions [12–14]. Jiang et al.
[15] experimentally investigated the Mode II fracture mode of GFRP/steel adhesive joints and found that the adhesive failure at
adhesion interface dominated the failure mode. Katsivalis et al. [16] carried out a comparison study on the optimal design of glass/
steel adhesive joints using several popular structural adhesives. The study treated the joint strength and ductility parameters as the
design target. The results reveal that the ductility of adhesive cause the development of extended plastic zone which also relies on the
joint geometry. The use of reinforced adhesives with inserting plastic strips, meshes or nanocomposites can also significantly generate
stronger joints [17–19]. In addition to the constraint from the adherends on the plastic zone which influences the fracture initiation of
adhesive and further the joint performance, adhesive thickness is found to be nonnegligible in contributing to the plastic zone [20].
Boutar et al. [21] investigated the optimal design with the surface roughness of AL adherend and adhesive thickness to achieve better
fatigue life. It is found that a thickness of 1.0 mm allows for the highest lifetime of polyurethane (PU) adhesive joints. Liβner et al. [8]
conducted a comprehensive investigation into the dependency of ductile film adhesive on the loading rate and adhesive thickness. The
results show that the tested separation-traction law tends to vary from an exponential shape to a trapezoidal one with increasing the
adhesive thickness from 0.1 mm to 0.5 mm. The adhesion strength is likely to be greater with a thinner adhesive, which also results in a
degradation of the ability to dissipate energy via delamination. Zhang et al. [22] found that the higher adhesion strength of thinner
adhesive layer was due to a larger proportion of cohesive failure.
Different designs of joint types and optimal geometrical features have been frequently reported, for example, scarf adhesive joints
[23], stepped-lap joints [24] to suit certain engineering use or adherend notches devised to reduce the stress concentration [25]. The
most commonly joint type might still be single lap joint (SLJ) as it is more convenient to make in the practice and has a straightforward
shape to simplify the analysis assumptions [26,27]. Another popular approach to enhance the joint performance is to pre-treat the
adherend surface in mechanical or chemical methods. Feng et al. [28] used the laser texturing to process the steel surface for adhe­
sively joining. The joints with the regular surface patterns of dimple, groove shapes were tested. The former had a limited improvement
of the shear strength, whereas the latter can increase more than two times the original strength. Marinosci et al. [29] examined the
effect of grit-blasting on the fracture toughness of joints made of titanium and thermoplastic composites. It is found that a polished
surface will generate the lowest fracture toughness, whilst the higher roughness of metal surface can increase the toughness values
until that reaches a threshold at nearly 2.5 μm. Pascuzzo et al. [30] found that the pattern period of interface representing a sequential
variation of strong and weak interfaces also significantly affected the joint strength. This implies that a similar consequence might be
achieved by controlling the microscale periods of micro surface roughness, which can be obtained via a macroscale fine adjustment of
surface treatment technology. Shokrian et al. [31] performed a comprehensive study on the effects due to different surface treatments
on the surface roughness of AL adherend and joint strength. Both mechanical treatments such as abrasion and chemical treatments
including HCL acid etching, nitric acid etching were adopted. The results indicate the chemical treatment can generate a highest
surface roughness around 4.4 μm and the mechanical approach can only make a roughness value up to nearly 2.1 μm. Lower roughness
will commonly result in lower joint strength and higher possibility of adhesive failure. However, the evident improvement of joint
strength due to the chemical treatment is partially attributed to the higher roughness, as the chemical condition at AL-adhesive
interface also contributes to triggering the cohesive failure. Reports concerning other microstructural features such as voids at
interface or within adhesives [32,33], the micro interlocking design of adhesive structures [34], the micro defects of adherends [35]
can also be seen. The findings so far have identified the necessity of involving the microstructures, in particular, surface micro-
roughness, in the investigation on the manufacture and assessment of adhesive joints.
In addition to the experimental investigation, appropriate numerical methods, which are able to describe the microstructures as
well as capturing the micromechanical behaviors such as micro-crack initiation, coalescence and propagation, can provide more
insightful information [36]. Extensive efforts have been made to numerically investigate the effect of microstructures on the joint
behaviors. Popular finite element method (FEM) has difficulties in producing the above features and the great discontinuity of massive
microscale fractures [37–39]. The simplifications into a regular pattern of microstructures are commonly used, e.g., Razavi et al. [40]
used sinusoidal functions to denote the non-flat interface in FE model. Reports using the spatial heterogeneity of adhesion instead of
considering the micro-roughness can also be found. Li et al. [41] assumed that the stochastic adhesion followed a lognormal distri­
bution. The Napierian logarithm of interface roughness and strength can thus be described. Liang et al. [32] developed a new
reconstruction algorithm to synthesize the periodic microstructural models, which can be transformed into a FE model with statistical
representative volume element (SRVE). Yu et al. [42] adopted the root mean square roughness and autocorrelation functions to
describe the random roughness at interfacial transition zone of concrete. Sbiaai et al. [43] investigated the deposition generating the
surface roughness of metal surface using a kinetic Monte Carlo method, which can benefit the problems of stochastic roughness in
simulation. In addition, the discrete element method (DEM) has been adopted in various engineering sectors to simulate the micro­
structural response of a wide range of materials, e.g., mortar-bolt joining [44], plasma-sprayed alumina coatings [45], rock joints
considering macro–micro roughness [46]. Xie et al. [46] employed the Gaussian smoothing method to separate the undulation
characteristics and calculate the morphological parameters from the roughness data. Discrete element (DE) model was then used to

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X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

examine the effects of the parameters such as average undulation angle, tangent angle of slope on the shear strength of rock joint.
Discrete element model has been found to have great flexibility and strength to overcome the concerned problems. However, its
applicability in modelling the microstructures and the micro–macro failure of adhesive joints has not been well examined. The
associated works are extremely limited.
Thus, this work seeks the development and validation of a fine micromechanical model which can introduce the key micro­
structures (i.e., surface micro-roughness) of adhesive joints, as well as providing insights into the mechanism of the concerned micro-
roughness. The novelty points are:

(1) A fine particle-based DE model was developed, for the first time, to describe the surface micro-roughness and capture the
microscale crack initiation, coalescence and propagation that controls the macroscale failure of adhesive joints.
(2) The insightful micro-mechanisms due to the key statistical features of micro-roughness on the micromechanical response and
macroscale behavior of adhesive joints were identified. The micro-mechanisms such as the mechanical interlocking, mitigation
on crack propagation due to the irregular roughness were summarised, as first of this kind.

The experimental study including the 3D laser scanning and single lap shear tests was firstly conducted on the joints, which were
made of epoxy adhesive (Loctite EA 9497) and aluminum adherends with mechanical surface treatment. The reconstruction approach
of stochastic micro-roughness was developed based on the scanning results from different roughness levels. The fine DE models were
subsequently developed with introducing the actual and regenerated micro-roughness. The key stochastic parameters of micro-
roughness in horizontal and vertical directions were considered to capture their effects on the micro-mechanisms and the associ­
ated macroscale response of joints.

2. Experimental study and observations

Laboratory tests were performed to investigate the influences due to the micro-roughness on the joint performance from multiple
aspects. The experiments encompass the microscopic laser scanning for the analysis of the micro-roughness, SLJ tests for the identi­
fication of the macroscale joint behaviour, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for the insights of fractured joint surfaces after SLJ
tests.
The statistical features from the microscale laser scanning were analysed for the subsequent reconstruction of micro-roughness in
the developed DE model. The experimental observations can also assist the determination of mechanical assumption for the models.

2.1. Experimental design

SLJs were selected to perform the mechanical tests. 6082/6063 T6 aluminium alloy was used to make the adherend plates with a
dimension of 125.0 mm × 25.0 mm × 0.3 mm. Loctite EA 9497 adhesive (Henkel ltd.), a two component and room temperature curing
epoxy adhesive, was adopted. The lap length was determined as 25.0 mm, whilst the adhesive thickness was 0.2 mm. The SLJ
specimens had a curing time over 7 days to guarantee that the adhesive and adhesion reached most of their expected strength.
Before making the SLJ specimens, the adherend sheets were subjected to the surface treatment using 60 grit and 2500 grit
sandpapers respectively, which was expected to generate the bound values of roughness with classic abrasion. In order to achieve the
higher consistence of surface roughness, grinding machine (SAPHIR 330) was used to carry out the abrasion. The adherend surface was
scanned using 3D laser microscope (Olympus OLS5100) (Fig. 1 (a)). A length of 12.5 mm for high roughness and 4.0 mm for low

Fig. 1. The testing apparatus of micro-roughness scanning and SLJ tests. (a) 3D laser microscopic scanning. (b) Optical measurement and SLJ test
set up.

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roughness at each surface were scanned to obtain a mean status of micro-roughness. The statistical features of the micro-roughness in
horizontal and vertical directions were subsequently analysed.
The design of SLJ tests followed the standard ISO 4587 [47]. SLJ tests were subsequently conducted on both the specimens made of
treated adherends using a universal testing machine (Instron 3382). The high-resolution optical measurement was used to test and
record the displacement of key reference points (Fig. 1 (b)). A load speed of 0.1 mm/min was imposed to the clamped edge until the
joints lost most of its strength. Eight SLJ specimens with abrasion were tested.

2.2. Micro-roughness analysis

The micro-roughness from treated surfaces was analysed based on their profiles in both 2D and 3D spaces, which can be used to
determine an appropriate reconstruction approach of stochastic roughness for the following numerical models. The statistical dis­
tributions of the micro-roughness features in horizontal and vertical directions are of importance to generate a more realistic pattern of
adherend surface. The roughness features can be well described with two characteristic values according to the current works on
roughness characterization, i.e., the root mean square roughness Rq, the correlation length Lcor. In 2D scenario, the former is the
standard deviation of the surface height h(xi) from the mean line and can be calculated [48] by Eq. (1) or using power spectrum density
(PSD) function-based Eq. (2):
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
√
√1 ∑ N
Rq = √ h(xi )2 (1)
N i=1

√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
√ νU
√∑
Rq(νL, νU) = √ PSD(ν)Δν (2)
ν=νL

where N is the number of measured data points. νL and νU are the lower and upper bounds of spatial frequencyν, respectively. The
detailed computation procedure of PSD functions PSD(ν) can be found in Ref [49].
The correlation length is a parameterization of the autocorrelation function (ACF), which indicates a degree of similarity for surface
heights. The ACF can be calculated as:

Fig. 2. 3D surface profiles and microscopic photos from specimen GR60 and GF. (a) 3D surface profiles of GR60-3 and GR60-4, GF-1 and GF-2. (b)
Typical microscopic photos of GR60 and GF.

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X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

( ) 1 ∑ N− 1
ACF lj = h(xi )h(xi + lj ) (3)
N i=0

or
( ) ( ) ( )
ACF lj = ACVF lj / R2q (4)

where lj is a horizontal lag value given as lj = jΔl (j = 0, 1, 2, …), Δl is a horizontal increment, ACVF is the autocovariance function.
The correlation length is a parameter that evaluates the degradation speed of ACF and can be defined as the distance where the ACF
falls below 1/e of ACF(0), i.e.,

Fig. 3. The collections of extracted surface profiles and PSD of treated adherends. (a) Surface profiles within 10 mm. The local profiles of GR60-1
and GR60-2 within 0.5 mm are highlighted. (b) PSD results.

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ACF(Lcor ) = ACF(0) ⋅ (1/e) (5)

Fig. 4. The distribution identifications of scanned surface profiles. (a) The histogram and Gaussian fitting of surface height. The roughness,
skewness and kurtosis values are given. (b) Autocorrelation fit using exponential functions. The interval of determined correlation length is given.

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X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

1 ∑
N− 1
ACF(0) = h(xi )h(xi ) =R2q (6)
N i=0

It can be seen that ACF(0) actually equals to the square of the root mean square roughness (R2q), which links the roughness feature in
horizontal direction with that in vertical one. Once extracting the surface profiles from experimental scanning, the ACF functions can
be determined by its definition as given in Eq. (3), or using autocovariance functions in Eq. (4). In this work, the latter one was adopted
to obtain the ACF curve using MATLAB based on the extracted data points. The correlation length can then be easily determined to find
the nearest data point that makes the ACF value be smaller than ACF(0)⋅(1/e). Each surface profile from experimental data has one
corresponding value of Lcor. Once Lcor is determined, an exponential equation can be used to fit the ACF curve as:
( )
f lj = (1/e)lj /Lcor (7)

Thus, once the distribution of Rq roughness and correlation length can be determined, they can be combined to describe the
roughness features of treated adherend surfaces. In this work, 2D surface profiles from different treated adherends were selected to
determine the concerned parameters and their distribution. The 2D profiles were along the central line on the scanned 3D surface
profiles. Typical 3D surface profiles and corresponding microscopic photos from treated specimens via laser microscopic scanning were
given in Fig. 2. It can be seen that on the treated surface of GR60 the growth lines of roughness patterns (see red dashed arrows in Fig. 2
(a)) are more likely to be perpendicular to the tensile direction, which can improve the microscale mechanical interlocking between
adherend and adhesive materials. It also indicates that the simplification of 3D to 2D profiles is rational. The surface of GF specimens is
seen to be ground and fine without significant surface fluctuation (Fig. 2 (b)).
The extracted results of surface profiles from eight adherends are shown in Fig. 3 (a). It is seen that most of the surface heights are
within a range of − 20 μm to 20 μm. The surface profiles seem to have many sharp peaks and troughs. As brittle adhesives are highly
sensitive to critical flaws or sharp tips of adhesion interface, which will facilitate the stress concentration and further a brittle failure,
the local surface profiles within 0.5 mm are given to check the potential sharp tips at interface. The results indicate that the adhesion
interface is, in fact, smooth without significant tips. The PSD results of surfaces are also given in Fig. 3 (b) to examine the consistency of
the treated surface from a different viewpoint of spatial frequency domain from the classic roughness statistics. Satisfactory consis­
tency of the treated surfaces can be found in different frequency regions.
The distributions of the surface profiles in horizontal and vertical directions are subsequently analysed. It is found that the surface
height follows the Gaussian distribution and ACF denoting a horizontal feature can be well fitted by exponential functions. The
characteristic values Rq, and Lcor are determined and shown in Fig. 4 (a) and (b), respectively. Rq has a range of 4.1 – 5.3 μm and Lcor
varies from 0.037 mm to 0.075 mm. It is noted that each subfigure in Fig. 4 (a) has the results from two adherends which are bonded to
make one lap joint, e.g., GR60-1 and GR60-2 adherends are used to make a single lap joint denoted by GR60-1/2 afterwards.
The skewness and kurtosis are two important parameters of roughness which represent the symmetrical degree and the sharpness of
the profiles, respectively. The skewness might influence the joint resistance depending on load direction, whilst the kurtosis can affect
the local stress concentration due to the surface sharpness. The corresponding results are calculated [50] and shown in Fig. 4 (a) and
Table 4. The values of kurtosis in most cases are higher than 3.0, indicating a flatter distribution with many outliers. In Table 4, average
surface roughness Ra, the arithmetical average deviation of surface height and length ratio r representing the ratio of the true curved
length of rough surfaces to that of a flat surface are given as well. It is due to that the length ratio refers to the improvement of adhesion
area by rough surfaces, which might significantly influence the joint strength. Finally, following the determined distribution principles
and roughness features, the microstructural features at adhesion surface can be regenerated via classic roughness generation
algorithms..

2.3. Experimental observations

The SLJ specimens made of treated adherends were tested afterwards. All SLJ specimens had brittle failure with a sudden drop of
acting load at small displacement. From the macroscopic view, the failure modes of most specimens can be classified as adhesive
failure. Most specimens had a complete delamination of adhesive layer from one adherend (see 1 and 3 in Fig. 5), whilst few ones had
delamination at different adherends (see 2 in Fig. 5).
SEM scanning was subsequently adopted to find the microscale information that might contribute to the insights from the

Table 1
The extracted roughness characteristics of treated adherends.
ID Ra, μm Rq, μm Ssk Sku Lcor, mm r, -

GR60-1 3.070 4.7 − 0.70 4.59 0.053 1.28

GR60-2 3.156 4.3 − 0.64 4.11 0.045 1.28
GR60-3 3.173 4.4 − 0.38 4.29 0.037 1.30
GR60-4 2.753 4.1 − 0.14 3.20 0.074 1.27
GR60-5 2.739 4.2 0.00 3.05 0.048 1.29
GR60-6 2.676 4.6 − 0.05 3.43 0.046 1.31
GR60-7 2.696 4.9 0.03 3.56 0.051 1.30
GR60-8 2.764 5.3 0.07 2.92 0.075 1.30

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Fig. 5. Macroscopic observation on failure modes of specimens with different roughness.

micromechanical models. An example of scanning on GR60 specimen is given in Fig. 6, which shows one SEM photo with the cor­
responding element analysis result. The carbon elements on the surface are from the remaining adhesive materials. It can be seen that,
although the observed failure modes of GR60 specimens by naked eyes show a typical adhesive failure at bonding interfaces, the
microscopic scanning on the identification of material morphology and elements indicates that a thin layer of adhesive components are
still attached to the adherends. This can be due to the local interlocking between adhesive and micro rough surfaces, showing a mixed
process of delamination and cohesive fractures of adhesive. Thus, it is expected that a similar phenomenon can be seen in DE simu­
lation that a thin layer having a few small adhesive particles remains contacting with adherend particles.

3. Development of micromechanical models

3.1. Model configuration and materials

The software package particle flow code (PFC7.0) [51] was used to develop the micromechanical model. The model concept of
particle flow code can be found in Ref [52]. From Fig. 2 (a), as above mentioned the growth lines of roughness pattern show great
consistency of being perpendicular to the tensile direction, it is hence rational to simplify the computational domain to a 2D model
(Fig. 7 (a)), as great difficulties of computation cost rise in simulating a fine 3D model with considering surface micro-roughness.

Fig. 6. Microscopic observation on the adhesion interfaces of GR60 after failure.

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Furthermore, a strategy that a thin layer of adherend particles in area B (Fig. 7 (b)) within the height of ten times the surface roughness
adopts a refined particle packing with very small particles to reduce the computation cost, whilst the other part of adherend (area A)
uses a regular packing with large particles and follows the hexagonal packing. The adhesive layer (area C) will be generated via an
expansive particle method with an identical particle radius to that of refined adherend particles (area B). The adhesive particles will
gradually expand and compact till reaching the defined porosity. They are also allowed to move into and finally fill in the rough surface
of adherends, which assumes that the adhesion between adherend and adhesive is perfectly formed during the manufacturing.
The contact model between particles is determined to be the soft bond model (SBM) after the trials of virtual experiment. It is able
to simulate the ductile property of adherends as well as the softening behaviours of adhesives, particularly the ductile and soft ad­
hesives. Area A utilized the theoretical solutions combined with additional softening parameters for the regular packed particles. The
equations for the contact stiffness of isotropic material are given as:
Normal contact stiffness
( )
2Eλ 2
kn = √̅̅̅ 1+ (1)
2 3(1 + v) 3(1 − v)

Tangential contact stiffness

2|(3v − 1)|Eλ
ks = √̅̅̅ (2)
6 3(1 − v2 )
where E and v represent the elastic modulus and the Poisson’s ratio, respectively. λ denotes the particle thickness. The softening
factor is 200 for AL, with a softening tensile strength factor of 0.9.
The refined area B and C adopted the regressed models of estimating microscopic parameters from a machine learning-based
calibration study [52,53]. In this work, the experimental and numerical study only concerns the brittle Loctite EA 9497 epoxy ad­
hesive. The calibration concept of the adhesives is: (a) the bulk property of adhesives should firstly be calibrated, in particular, the
elastic modulus of adhesive should be guaranteed to be precise; (b) the calibration of Mode I and Mode II fracture energies should be
subsequently calibrated. This is performed with fixing the bond parameters that dominant the elastic modulus. Finally, the calibrated
bond parameters of adherend materials and adhesives are shown in Table 2. The keywords of the calibrated parameters in PFC package
are given to help the readers reproduce the model.

3.2. Micro-roughness generation and interfaces

Two types of micro-roughness, i.e., actual and reproduced roughness profiles, are considered in this work. In this section, the
former roughness profiles from the experimental scanning are employed to generate a realistic surface pattern of DE model. It is
assumed that the point P at peak height locates at the identical surface to that without abrasion (i.e., flat surface), thus, the particles
below the point P and above the roughness curves can be removed to generate the rough surface. GR60-1, GR60-2, GR60-3 are taken as
the example cases to show the generated roughness pattern in DE models. Fig. 8 (a) gives the comparison between the generated model
surfaces and the scanned surface profiles. It can be seen that the generated surfaces agree well with those from the actual scanning

Fig. 7. The details of the developed DE models. (a) The configuration and geometrical details of the joints. (b) The particle packing and refinement
of the model in the highlighted area, the thin layers of fine adherend particles (B) were used to generate micro-roughness.

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Table 2
Soft bond parameters for the refined adherend and adhesive particles.
Keyword Description Adherend Adhesive
AL Loctite EA 9497

sb_emod Effective modulus (MPa) 4.55 × 104 3.65 × 103

sb_kratio Normal to shear stiffness ratio 3.6 4.7
sb_rmul Radius multiplier 1.44 1.9
sb_ref_str* Reference strength of soft bond (MPa) 280 14.0
beta Ratio of tensile to cohesion strength 0.25 1.0
*
user-defined keywords. sb_ref_str is defined as twice the tensile strength of the bond.

results (see blue lines), the determined particle sizes can precisely construct the micro-roughness patterns. The preliminary sensitivity
study also shows that a particle size of 3.0 μm is adequate to produce close results to that with much smaller particles, thus, it is
accepted as the standard size for the following numerical study.
It is worth noting that the rough adhesion interface cannot be fully filled with adhesives due to the material viscosity, micro-cavities
might exist at the interface [54]. Recent attempts include adopting surface treatment [55] and using resin pre-coating (RPC) technique
were made to fill all micro-cavities (even nanoscale) to enhance the adhesion ability [33,56]. Hu et al. [19,57] found that the RPC
process can generate at least 20–40 % higher shear strength at interface, which revealed that the micro-cavities were worthy of
investigation and consideration in the DE model. However, the micro-cavities were difficult to characterize and be included in this
work and they might also interfere the evaluation on the micro-roughness. Therefore, the adhesion interfaces followed the assumption
that the micro-cavities can be fully filled with viscous adhesive materials during specimen curing. The loss of adhesion area or
interfacial resistance by micro-cavities was simplified into the degradation of adhesion ability such as adhesion strength and stiffness.
The adhesion interfaces were assigned with the parallel bond model (PBM). PBM neglects the softening stage of the bonds after the
peak strength when comparing with SBM. The experimental observations show that the adhesion interface will have a sudden
delamination, which implies that the adhesion failure occurs simultaneously once exceeding the adhesion strength. The bonds at
adhesion interface can be calibrated with taking the tested fracture energies from adhesive failure as the target. The calibrated pa­
rameters for the bonds at adhesion interface are shown in Table 3. Fig. 8 (b) shows the assignment of bonds at the interfaces between
refined adherends and adhesive. It is also noted that the bonds between the refined adherend particles and the coarse area A of
adherends are determined to be unbreakable.

4. Numerical investigations

4.1. Influencing mechanisms of micro-roughness

Four influencing mechanisms might exist in enhancing the adhesion ability by generating micro-roughness: (1) The adhesion

Fig. 8. The generated model surfaces with bonds added and corresponding recorded profiles. (a) The comparison of the generated rough surfaces
and the recorded profiles of GR60-1, 60–2 and 60–3 within a length of 1.6 mm. (b) The bond assignment of the refined area.

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Table 3
Calibrated bond parameters for the adhesion interfaces.
Keyword Description AL - Loctite EA 9497

pb_kn Normal stiffness (N/mm3) 2.0 × 1011

pb_ks Shear stiffness (N/mm3) 4.4 × 1010
pb_ten Tensile strength (MPa) 7.6
pb_coh Cohesion (MPa) 4.4
pb_fa Friction angle (˚) 14

condition can be strengthened via surface treatment, which is more frequently seen in chemical treatment; (2) Mechanical interlocking
due to rough surface can provide resistance to the load in certain direction; (3) Rough surface has more adhesion area; (4) Micro-
roughness might be able to mitigate the initiation, coalescence and propagation of microcracks inside adhesive. As the mechanical
treatment does not have the first mechanism, the other ones will be investigated in this work.
DE models with rough or flat surface, tie-particles (TP) or bonded-particles (BP) adhesion were developed for identifying the
mechanisms resulting in the differences due to micro-roughness. TP adhesion represents a perfect adhesion which does not allow for
the detachment between adhesive and neighbouring adherend particles. BP adhesion used the calibrated bond parameters in Table 3.
The rough surface adopted GR60-1/2 as example, and the other configurations of the models were identical to those in the experiment.
Finally, over 320,000 particles and 780,000 contacts were generated in the standard DE model. The load speed was determined as 0.2
m/s.
The validation of the numerical results was also performed. The comparison between 1) the numerical and experimental results, 2)
the BP and TP models, was shown in Fig. 9 (a) and (b), respectively. From Fig. 9 (a), it can be found that with the assigned bond
parameters of interface, the numerical results of BP model with roughness (BP-rough) can agree well with the recorded data from
experiment. A similar trend of strength enhancement to the test report can be seen in BP-rough, whereas the BP model with flat surface
(BP-flat) can only achieve significantly lower strength. However, the BP-flat presents a smaller displacement at failure than testing
data. Similarly, a significant difference in initial stiffness between GR60 and GF specimens is seen. Two reasons might result in the

Fig. 9. Comparison of the numerical results and observations between the examined DE models. (a) Load-displacement curves of experimental
results and BP models. (b) Comparison of results between BP and TP models. (c) Observation on crack mitigation in BP models.

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X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

difference. First, as GF specimens were not subjected to the surface treatment, they had a much smoother surface with lower friction
coefficient which might lead to very small sliding from the fixtures. The peak displacement of GR and GF specimens is actually very
small because of the brittleness of the adopted epoxy adhesive. Thus, small sliding can result in obvious interference on the overall
stiffness. Second, the influence due to the mechanical interlocking from the roughness might enhance the stiffness in GR specimens,
which will be discussed in the subsequent discussion. From a sensitivity study, it is found that the contact stiffness at interface
significantly affects the displacement at failure, whereas the elastic property of adhesive has limited influence. The contact stiffness
relates to the movement between the adhesive and adherend particles, which is expected to vary for different surface treatments.
However, due to the lack of an efficient calibration method on this parameter in suiting different treated surfaces, the contact stiffness
remains the same in BP-rough and BP-flat models. Considering the very small displacement and limited ductility of the concerned
adhesive in this work, the numerical results of BP models can still be accepted.
Comparing the results of TP models with flat and rough surface in Fig. 9 (b), it is seen that once the decohesion between adherend
and adhesive is not allowable, the joint strength does not show evident difference. The displacement at failure has similar trend as well.
Thus, the mechanical interlocking by the micro-roughness cannot improve the joint strength without decohesion activated. This can be
attributed to the limited influence due to the “fixed” rough contact surface on the local stress/strain field. It is noted that the TP models
only disable the decohesion without imposing very stiff contacts at interface, which reduces the localized stress abruption. Once the
contacts at interface have high stiffness values, the stress abruption will easily trigger the fractures between adhesive particles near the
interface. In addition, once activating the decohesion in BP models, the difference of response between models TP-rough and BP-flat

Table 4
Examined characteristic values of roughness and profiles.
ID Rq, μm Lcor, mm Profile

LR1 5.0 0.0125

LR2 5.0 0.05
LR3 5.0 0.2

RL1 2.0 0.05

RL2 5.0 0.05
RL3 8.0 0.05

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X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

can be seen as the upper bound of reinforcement due to considering the mechanical interlocking by roughness. TP-rough model
achieves a joint strength of around 4800 N, which is more than 115 % higher than that of BP-flat model. Analogously, the initial
stiffness of TP-rough model presents a similar enhancement ratio. This indicates that by controlling the adhesion ability, the me­
chanical interlocking by roughness can significantly affect the joint strength.
In the models with decohesion activated (Fig. 9 (b)), a significant increase of joint strength from BP-rough can be found when
comparing with that from BP-flat. As above mentioned, the effect of mechanical interlocking by the micro-roughness on the joint
strength depends on the activation and ability of adhesion interface, the actual contribution of mechanical interlocking is expected to
be much smaller than the upper bound from perfect “tie-adhesion” (TP). The increases of adhesion area can also contribute to the joint
strength. It is seen that GR60 specimens obtain a range of joint strength from 2700 N to 3200 N, whilst GF specimens achieves that from
1600 N to 2000 N. The bound values are around 60 % − 68 % higher with introducing rough surface. In Table 1, the length ratio r
indicating the increase ratio of adhesion area has a range of 1.27 to 1.30 in each adhesion surface, indicating that two adhesion surfaces
can obtain around 27 % − 30 % increase of adhesion area. However, as above mentioned that many micro-cavities might exist at the
adhesion interface which can result in an evident decline of shear strength when comparing with that from the case having entire
adhesion. The increase of adhesion area cannot be completely transformed to a similar increase proportion of joint strength. Thus, it
can be inferred that the increase of adhesion area contributes less than other influencing factors (e.g., mechanical interlocking) to the
enhancement of joint strength.
The observation on the fractures within the lap area of BP models was given in Fig. 9 (c), which also highlighted the areas near the
lap ends. As there are massive small bond fractures in the model, the crack mitigation cannot be well observed from a macroscale view,
the fracture numbers at the same loading step (1.6 × 106 steps) are given. BP-rough model has around 30,000 bond fractures, which
sees a greatly higher value of 58,000 in BP-flat model. Thus, it might indicate that the micro-roughness does mitigate the crack
initiation and coalescence.

4.2. Effects of stochastic roughness features

It can be seen from the above study that the micro-roughness can improve the joint strength via providing more adhesion area and
mitigate the cracks. In addition, the mechanical interlocking at the interface, which can be enhanced by certain skewness of roughness,
is predicted to influence the micromechanical response. However, as the mechanical treatment is difficult to guarantee the skewness
consistency and the load direction varies, the skewness is hence not considered as the primarily examined roughness features. The
effects of two characteristic values, roughness Rq and correlation length Lcor on the joint response were investigated.
Regenerated rough surfaces of adherends were adopted to develop the models with stochastic roughness features following the
determined distributions of characteristic values. Considering that the chemical treatment or grit blasting can generate higher
roughness than those from this work, roughness Rq was determined to have a range of 2.0 – 8.0 μm according to the current report on
the surface treatment of AL adherends. An increment of 3.0 μm was set for the parametric models. Lcor indicates the speed that the
peaks of the rough profiles decline to the troughs. Higher Lcor commonly shows a smoother surface with fewer sharp peaks of profiles.
The examined values of Lcor were set as 0.0125 mm, 0.05 mm and 0.2 mm, whilst the roughness was fixed to 5.0 μm. The model IDs and
regenerated surface profiles are shown in Table 4.
The load–displacement results from the examined parametric models are shown in Fig. 10. From Fig. 10 (a), the joint strength sees a
rise and the corresponding strength increment decreases, when Lcor increases from 0.0125 mm to 0.2 mm. In the models with higher
Lcor, a smaller length ratio r (r = 1.15, 1.02 and 1.00 from LR1 to LR3, respectively) can be found. This indicates that the increase of
joint strength is very likely not due to a larger adhesion area in this case. In contrast, it shows a degradation effect caused by a smaller
Lcor, which introduces more sharp peaks of profiles and presents a more significant oscillation of surface. Too many sharp peaks or

Fig. 10. Load-displacement results from parametric models. (a) Models LR1 to LR3. (b) Models RL1 to RL3.

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X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

troughs with smaller neighbouring distance can result in a higher degree of stress concentration of adhesives. This can be further
confirmed by the fracturing footprints and patterns of adhesives shown in Fig. 11 (a). The fracturing footprints are recorded once the
bond failure occurs and will not have further movement. The fracture patterns are shown with the adhesive fragments represented by
blue blocks or particles, which has motion under further loading. The adhesive fracturing shows a similar behaviour to adhesive failure
at most of the bottom adhesion surface in LR1, which is characterized by the continuous propagation of cracks near interface and lower
joint strength. The stress concentration in LR1 results in the premature fractures of adhesive materials without allowing for more
cohesive fractures which can promote the resistance. In LR3, more cohesive fractures of adhesives can be seen instead. Thus, a rougher
surface in horizontal direction does not always exhibit a higher joint strength.
From Fig. 10 (b), the joint strength has an increase and subsequent evident reduction with using higher roughness. In current
reports, a higher roughness commonly relates to better joint performance, particularly when the horizontal roughness features are
consistent. However, this might be controversial when the roughness exceeds a certain threshold as the joint strength declines from
2891 N in RL2 to 2277 N in RL3. Fig. 11 (b) shows that most of cracks in RL2 finally coalesce into inclined cohesive fractures, which
leads to a fracture pattern with many smaller fragments. As for RL3, although the fracture pattern is also with many fragments,
however, very thin layers of particles can be found to remain attached to adherends (see arrows). This indicates an adhesive failure
mode in those areas, which fails to fully use the resistance of adhesive materials and results in lower joint strength. Thus, from this the
roughness threshold corresponding to maximum joint strength might be between Rq = 5.0 and 8.0 μm. However, for the stochastic
simulation many more models are required to support this. More discussion will be presented in subsequent section.
By comparing the results of LR2 (Fig. 10 (a)) and RL2 (Fig. 10 (b)) with identical roughness and correlation length, the joint
strength of RL2 is around 470 N higher than that of LR2. As two models also have similar length ratio of nearly 1.017, the other
parameters of roughness (skewness and kurtosis) are employed to find more insights into such difference. The difference between the
kurtosis values of LR2 (Sku = 3.03) and RL2 (Sku = 3.05) are found to be negligible, respectively. It is found that the skewness of LR2 is
0.19, which is opposite to that of RL2 (Ssk = -0.1). The negative skewness in RL2 shows that the peaks of rough surface incline to the
right side (Fig. 12 (a)), which will generate a similar configuration to that show in Fig. 12 (b). In this configuration, the mechanical
interlocking between rough surface and adhesive will be improved and further results in a development trend of fractures crossing the
depth direction, i.e. typical cohesive fractures. However, it should be noted that as above mentioned, once the correlation length
further decreases in this case, the cohesive fractures might greatly diminish with adhesive failure-like fractures near the peaks of rough
surface instead. In LR2 with a positive skewness, the corresponding configuration can be described by that shown in Fig. 12 (c). It is
more likely to induce adhesive failure-like fractures near the peaks, which are with lower joint strength. Thus, the skewness is expected
to influence the joint strength via triggering different failure modes.
As above discussed, it is found that different responses might exist in the joint designs with same characteristic values of roughness,
which can be due to a deeper level of roughness features such as skewness. It is implied that more computation attempts on the
stochastic roughness might result in different trends or conclusions. Thus, the methods for stochastic features such as Monte Carlo
simulations are more appropriate than a single simulation for defined characteristic value. However, as the developed DE models
demand huge computation cost, a Monte Carlo simulation is less practical to be presented here. Moreover, the possibility that in most
cases the model with same characteristic values of roughness can achieve similar response still exists. According to the potentially
evident influences of skewness, additional parametric study on skewness was then performed to examine the consistency of the joint
responses, which can help identify the cases that may need a Monte Carlo simulation in the future research. Three values of skewness
were set for each group, where two high absolute values of positive or negative skewness, the skewness value near 0, were selected.
Table 5 shows the selected skewness values and corresponding IDs.
The load–displacement results from the examined cases were given in Fig. 13. From Fig. 13 (a), it is seen that although the increase

Fig. 11. Fracturing footprints and patterns of adhesives from parametric models. (a) Models LR1 to LR3. (b) Models RL1 to RL3. Fracturing
footprints are denoted by short red line segments. Adhesive fragments are represented by blue blocks or particles. (For interpretation of the ref­
erences to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

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X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

Fig. 12. The differences of fracture propagation due to the opposite skewness values. (a) Schematic diagram of fracturing variation due to different
skewness values. (b) Profile differences by skewness.

of the correlation length leads to a rise of joint strength as a similar finding to that from Fig. 10 (a), the variation of skewness does not
result in a significant difference. The growth of load–displacement curve and the displacement at failure are found to be consistent
regardless of the positive or negative value of skewness. It is seen that the case with negative skewness presents the trend to have higher
joint strength than that with positive one, e.g., comparing LR32 with LR31. However, the increase is likely to be minor and neglected.
Thus, it indicates that in the joint designs concerning the correlation length, the skewness might not yield evident influences on the
joint response and many stochastic simulations are unlikely to be required in most scenarios.
From Fig. 13 (b), cases RL31 to RL33 show consistent results of joint response, of which the joint strength is still seen to be the
lowest amongst the examined models. This agrees with the finding from Fig. 10 (b) where a highest Rq of 8.0 mm unexpectedly de­
grades the joint strength. However, differing from the observation that the joint strength with Rq of 5.0 mm is the highest (Fig. 10 (b)),
the new parametric models find that four cases (RL11, RL13, RL21, RL23 with skewness ≥ 0) achieve similar results (around 2700 N)
whilst RL12 and RL22 exhibit significant difference in joint strength. Although both RL12 and RL22 have negative skewness, the
former has a peak load at 2930 N and the latter achieves that at 2430 N below the mean result (2700 N). This shows that the influence
due to the negative skewness does need more stochastic simulations to provide solid evidences, or even deeper level (or local level) of
roughness feature should be considered.
The fracture process of three characteristic cases RL11, RL12 and RL22 was selected and shown in Fig. 14 to investigate the failure
mechanism and the differences due to skewness. It is seen that the joints present consistent fracture initiation of adhesives, which can
be characterized by two featured cracks following the propagation direction denoted by the arrow (see first subfigures). The initiation
point locates with a distance close to adhesive thickness from the edges of lap area. The edges of lap area have been found to have
significant stress concentration of both peel and shear stress. Before fracture initiation, the stress magnitude will have a rapid decline
after the peak value near the edges until reaching a plateau near the lap center. Once the stress field near the lap edges reaches the
failure criterion of epoxy adhesive, the growth of fractures results in a redistribution of response stress inside the adhesive and further
propagate towards the lap center. The lap area will subsequently be subjected to additional bending action due to the rotation of joint,
which will promote the mixed mode stress on the adhesion surface and adhesives. The bending action adjusts the peel stress distri­
bution that the peel stress grows from an original plateau to antisymmetric manner near the lap center. This can trigger the cracks near
the lap center, which can be seen from second or third subfigures in Fig. 14 that several oblique cracks initiate adjacent to the center.
Fourth subfigures in Fig. 14 refer to the fracture pattern corresponding to the peak of the response force prior to the drop. It is found
that the peak force coincides with the coalescence of fractures that forms into an adhesive failure-like pattern. Most bond line length
has been covered by the fractures. RL11 with positive skewness tends to have adhesive-like pattern at single adhesion surface, whereas
RL12 and RL22 with negative skewness have that at both surfaces. However, this is not solid as the fracture coalescence is dependent
on the local roughness feature and the stress field. Although RL12 and RL22 present similar fracture process and pattern, they achieve

Table 5
Examined cases on skewness.
ID Rq, μm Lcor, mm Skewness

LR11, 12, 13 5.0 0.0125 0.155, − 0.133, 0.000

LR21, 22, 23 5.0 0.05 0.383, − 0.281, 0.001
LR31, 32, 33 5.0 0.2 0.515, − 0.525, 0.005
RL11, 12, 13 2.0 0.05 0.296, − 0.296, − 0.005
RL21, 22, 23 5.0 0.05 0.285, − 0.271, 0.009
RL31, 32, 33 8.0 0.05 0.334, − 0.269, − 0.001

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X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

Fig. 13. Load-displacement results from cases with different skewness values. (a) Models LR11 to LR33. (b) Models RL11 to RL33. Ssk (+), Ssk (-), Ssk
(0) represents cases with positive skewness, negative skewness and skewness near zero, respectively.

the peak response force with evident difference. Considering that the joint rotation is related to the material stiffness, the mixed mode
action on the adhesive or adhesion surface is expected to be close in the examined cases. Thus, the local roughness feature that may
trigger premature generation of adhesive-failure like pattern might affect more on the joint strength than a mean indicator like
skewness.
Although the above works indicate several trends of influences due to various roughness descriptions or values, the performed
numerical works are still very limited due to the huge computation cost of running many roughness cases. To obtain more rational
conclusions, more aspects of roughness features still require further investigations, for example: (1) indicators showing overall
roughness such as root mean square/arithmetical roughness, the correlation length; (2) indicators showing overall trend of local
roughness feature such as skewness and kurtosis; (3) indicators or distributions showing the local distributions of roughness features in
2D and 3D space, e.g., PSD which encompasses deeper level of information of surface profile both in local and global scale. The in­
vestigations can benefit the manufacturing, process techniques (e.g., laser texturing or additive manufacture) in guaranteeing more
consistent reinforcement of adhesive joints via controlling a few predominant roughness features.

5. Conclusions

This work developed a micro-roughness informed particle-based model of adhesive joints, which can capture the insights into the
micromechanical response of joints due to the micro-roughness features. Combined with the testing data and observations on failure
modes from the single lap shear tests, the applicability of the refined numerical models was validated. The influencing mechanism of
micro-roughness were thoroughly investigated from several aspects, i.e., adhesion area, mechanical interlocking and crack mitigation,
as well as introducing key stochastic parameters such as root mean square roughness, correlation length. The following conclusions can
be drawn:

(1) The mechanical interlocking is likely to contribute the most to the improvement of the joint strength, which might be up to more
than 100 % in a perfect “fixed” adhesion scenario than the case with weak adhesion. The increase of adhesion area due to the

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X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

Fig. 14. Fracture process with positive or negative skewness. (a) RL11, mean joint strength − 2700 N. (b) RL12, high joint strength – 2930 N. (c)
RL22, low joint strength – 2430 N. Each fourth subfigure shows the fracture status corresponding to the peak value of the response force curve.

micro-roughness is believed to affect slightly less than the mechanical interlocking as the micro-cavities at adhesion interface
can further reduce its contribution. The crack mitigation by the micro-roughness can be observed, however, its further effects on
the joint strength still depends on the triggered failure mode.
(2) The rougher surface, e.g., having very small correlation length in horizontal direction or high roughness value in vertical di­
rection, does not present consistently higher joint strength. The overall joint performance was controlled by the failure mode,

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X.-e. Wang et al. Engineering Fracture Mechanics 277 (2023) 108954

which shows high sensitivity to the local stress concentration near the rough surface affected by roughness features. It is found
that the skewness exhibits significant influence by inducing different failure modes near adhesion surface.

Data availability
The data that supports the findings of this study are available within the article.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Xing-er Wang: Writing – original draft, Validation, Investigation. Kai Pang: Investigation, Data curation. Xuhao Huang: Soft­
ware, Formal analysis. Jian Yang: Writing – review & editing. Jianqiao Ye: Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Xiaonan Hou:
Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Investigation, Funding acquisition.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability

No data was used for the research described in the article.

Acknowledgement

This study was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [Grant No. EP/T020695/1]. The authors would
like to acknowledge Henkel Ltd. for the technical support and providing adhesive specimens.

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