## 1 Introduction  
Adhesive bonding is an important technology utilized in diverse engineering disciplines such as aerospace, automotive, marine, and construction. It has many benefits over various conventional mechanical fastening techniques such as riveting, welding, screws, bolts, and nuts due to the flexibility to join different materials, homogeneous and minimal stress concentration, enhanced fatigue resistance, and lighter weight [1, 2, 3]. Adhesive joints, when employed in dynamic applications, possess higher fatigue resistance and extended fatigue life compared to traditional joining methods. They also offer light weight, effective bonding of thin and dissimilar materials, reliable sealing, cost-efficient manufacturing, and notable vibration-damping properties [4, 5]. The integrity and longevity of adhesive joints are crucial in diverse engineering applications. Single lap joints (SLJs) are the most often utilized type of adhesive joint because of their ease of usage and efficiency in transferring load. However, the ability to accurately forecast how the adhesive will behave under various loading scenarios is crucial to the functionality of these joints [6, 7]. Adhesive joints present an attractive substitute; nevertheless, accurately modeling their strength and failure is challenging due to several factors, including the difficulty in testing the adhesive as a standalone material, uncertainties in translating standalone adhesive properties to the bonded configuration, the thinness and varying thickness of the adhesive layer, and the complexity of ensuring proper bonding chemistry and surface preparation. Furthermore, understanding how the adhesive behaves under real-world loading and environmental conditions remains an active area of research. Finite element (FE) methods utilizing continuum mechanics approaches are commonly used to analyze adhesive joints. The assessment of joint failure usually relies on various criteria for the constituent materials, such as maximum strain, maximum principal stress, and ductile damage. These criteria are not exhaustive and may include additional factors. Despite their widespread use in the past [8], these element-based failure criteria have several drawbacks, including their dependence on mesh size [9; 10], perfect adhesive-surface bonding assumptions, and typical usage of bulk properties of the constituent materials as input for modeling. Cohesive zone (CZ) modeling has become a viable strategy for dealing with these issues. A traction-separation law, which describes the connection between stress (traction) and separation (displacement) across the adhesive contact, is used in CZ modeling to represent the adhesive layer. With a more realistic representation of the initiation and propagation of cracks inside the adhesive layer, this technique offers a greater understanding of the failure mechanisms. The application of CZ modeling to adhesive joint analysis has demonstrated a great deal of promise for improving the joint performance prediction accuracy under different loading scenarios [11; 12]. For example, [PERSON] and [PERSON] [13] provide a thorough discussion of the mechanics of lap-shear joints using a CZ method. In addition to taking geometry into account, FE models containing CZ elements also enable the treatment of the interface's cohesive characteristics and the adherends' plastic deformation. The localized plastic and damage behaviors along the interface were described by [PERSON] et al. [14] using CZ modeling, and the adhesive thickness is dependent on CZ hardening, which is incorporated into the suggested numerical technique to forecast the adhesive joint failure. Typically, when predicting the failure load in the composite SLJ using CZ modeling, the CZ elements are utilized to simulate the adhesive layer while the composite adherend is modeled using linear elastic orthotropic elements [15; 16]. [PERSON] et al. [16] examined how the shape of the adherend affects the peel and shear stress and the overall failure load of the composite SLJ when subjected to tension.