ENERCOMP Seminar Series
Durability analysis of adhesive joints: advancements, challenges, and the path to implementation.
Thursday, August 14th, 2025
ABSTRACT
In recent decades, adhesive bonding has become a cornerstone of modern engineering, used extensively in industries such as aerospace, automotive, wind energy, and civil engineering. While bonded joints offer significant advantages over traditional fastening methods, ensuring their long-term durability remains a complex challenge. Factors such as fatigue, environmental aging, and multi-bonded configurations create significant barriers to the reliable prediction of service life in real-world structures.
Despite extensive research and the development of specialized models for fatigue and environmental degradation, translating this knowledge into practical design and maintenance workflows is still difficult. Current commercial software often lacks the integration of advanced durability models, leaving engineers to navigate a fragmented landscape of partial solutions. The situation becomes even more complicated in large or intricate structures with multiple bonded areas, where durability assessments must account for variable loads, temperature fluctuations, humidity, and long-term adhesive property changes.
This presentation provides a comprehensive review of durability analysis for adhesive joints, exploring the strengths and limitations of existing testing methods (e.g., strength, fracture, fatigue, and aging tests) and highlighting the difficulties in implementing these methods at scale. Special attention will be given to the challenge of balancing fatigue model accuracy with computational efficiency and the need for practical tools that engineers can easily use. By addressing these implementation challenges and encouraging closer collaboration between researchers and industry, we can move toward more robust, accessible, and reliable durability assessments for adhesive joints, ultimately enhancing the safety and longevity of bonded structures across a range of applications.
About the speaker
Dr. Alireza Akhavan-Safar obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2017. As a coordinating researcher at INEGI, Portugal since 2018, he possesses diverse expertise in adhesives and adhesive joints, covering fatigue, fracture, impact, environmental factors, etc. Alireza has been engaging in several industrial projects mainly related to the durability assessment of bonded joints.
Alireza has published over 150 ISI papers (H index 28, Scopus) and delivered more than 160 presentations at international conferences including some keynote talks. Alireza also has named among the 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱'𝘀 𝗧𝗼𝗽 𝟮% 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 (most cited) in 2023. He has also authored or co-authored 6 international books and contributed to 11 book chapters. Alireza has supervised or co-supervised 16 master's and 8 PhD theses. He actively serves the scientific community as a reviewer for over 85 ISI journals and has evaluated research proposals for several international funding agencies.
Alireza is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal on Mechanics of Solids at the University of Porto, Associate Editor of the U.Porto Journal of Engineering, and a member of the editorial boards of journals such as the Proc IMEchE, Part L: Journal of Materials Design and Applications, Metals, Adhesives, and Archives of Advanced Engineering Science. Furthermore, Alireza is a member of the organizing committees of the International Conference on Durability, Repair and Maintenance of Structures and the International Conference on Vehicle Body Engineering. He serves as the scientific committee member of the International Conferences on Materials Design and Application, Structural Adhesive Bonding, Mechanics of Solids, and Mechanical Engineering and Applied Composite Materials.
Prof. Lucas FM da Silva is Full Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). He obtained his PhD in structural adhesive bonding of composites from the University of Bristol (United Kingdom) in 2004 and Aggregation from FEUP in 2011.
He leads the Advanced Joining Processes Unit (AJPU) of the Institute of Science and Innovation in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering (INEGI) composed of approximately 40 members post-doc, doctoral students and master students. The work includes the development welded joints, joints by plastic deformation and adhesively bonded joints. The research methodology is based on the mechanical characterization of materials and joints in terms of strength and fracture, modeling with analytical models and finite elements supported by careful experimental tests.
He coordinated 25 research projects mostly funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the European Commission.
He published 606 articles from the Web of Science (523 as author and 83 as editor), 43 books (17 as author and 26 as editor) and 59 international book chapters. His works were cited 22789 times and correspond to an h index of 74 (SCOPUS, 14/07/2025).
One of his articles won the SAGE Best Paper Award 2010 and Donald Julius Groen Prize 2010 (both awards given by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers). He received the FEUP Scientific Excellence Award in 2013 and a second time in 2018. He was awarded the Pedagogical Excellence Award in 2023.
He is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Adhesion (Taylor & Francis), Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part L: Journal of Materials: Design and Applications (Sage), International Journal of Mechanical Engineering Education (Sage), Journal of Advanced Joining Processes (Elsevier), U. Porto Journal of Engineering (University of Porto), Discover Mechanical Engineering (Springer) and Journal of Machine Design and Automation Intelligence (De Gruyter). He recently launched the Springer Proceedings of Engineering Mechanics: Research, Technology and Education book series. He is also the editor of two Springer book series (Advanced Structured Materials and Springer Briefs in Engineering: Computational Mechanics).
He organizes international conferences on joining technologies (Adhesive Bonding, Industrial Applications of Adhesives, Advanced Joining Processes, and Bio Joining), materials and structures (Materials Design and Applications, Mechanics of Solids, Durability, Repair and Maintenance of Structures and Vehicle Body Engineering), manufacturing (Engineering Manufacture), machine design (Machine Design) and education (Science and Technology Education).
He founded and presides over the Portuguese Adhesion and Adhesives Association, which belongs to the European Group of Adhesion Societies (EURADH).
He has 13 patents mainly on production methods and testing of structural adhesive bonds. He developed a commercial software available online (jointdesigner) to design adhesive joints. He does consulting work for national (e.g. Bosch, Amtrol, Frezite, etc.) and international companies (e.g. Nagase Chemtex, Henkel, Aston Martin, Honda, John Deere, Safran, Infineon, etc.).