Despite offering very attractive advantages over traditional joining methods, one of the setbacks of adhesive bonding is its long-term strength in aggressive environments, such as environments with high moisture and extreme temperatures. With the rise of new lightweight materials and their recent use in everyday vehicles, transportation industries have been very interested in determining the long-term behavior of adhesive joints. The aim is to build durable, lighter vehicles, which consume less energy and emit less pollution. The two main factors that affect the strength of vehicle adhesive joints are exposure to moist environments and high and low temperatures. There are some works concerning the effect of these two factors separately and some predictive models have been developed, which help the engineer to design reliable, safe, and efficient adhesive joints. However, the combined effect of temperature and moisture is not yet totally understood. This paper presents a review on the temperature and moisture degradation of adhesive joints.

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The present work focuses on the effects of water degradation on the fatigue behaviour of adhesive joints bonded with aluminium adherends. The objective of this study is to measure the influence that humidity has on the fatigue crack growth velocity of two distinct adhesives characterized using the Paris Law, using double cantilever beam (DCB) specimens in unaged and various aged conditions loaded in mode I in order to understand the influence that water content has on the Paris Law constants. It was found that the slope of the Paris Law curve is not heavily changed with the presence of water, but a shift in the curves does occur, generally resulting in a crack initiating at a lower threshold than in the unaged adhesive. Based on this behaviour, it can be concluded that an increase in water content reduces the fatigue joint strength and lifespan of adhesive joints bonded with the studied adhesives.