## 4 Conclusions  
Cracked adhesive bounded joints can experience combined tensile and shear loads and their fracture behavior can be investigated by means of suitable testing specimens and methods. Hence, a new test configuration called bi-material inclined notch short bend beam (BISBB) specimen was proposed in this research for investigating the mixed mode I/II fracture behavior of adhesive bounded joints. Compared to the previous test samples utilized for fracture study of adhesive bounded joints, the suggested BISBB specimen has some advantages such as simple geometry and ease of testing with conventional three-point bend fixture, producing full ranges of mode mixity from pure mode I to pure mode II and smaller size of material and adherent materials. In order to demonstrate the ability and validity of the BISBB specimen, several finite element analyses were performed on this specimen using ABAQUS code, and the influencing parameters, including the crack length ratio, loading span ratio, type of adherent and permutations of the adherent materials, were considered as variable. Fracture parameters of the BISBB specimen including mode I and mode II stress intensity factors, \(T\)-stress, Biaxiality ratio (\(Bi\)) and fracture initiation angle were determined using extensive numerical analyses and for different geometry and loading conditions. The suitable ranges of crack length ratio (\(a\)/W) and loading span ratio (\(S\)/W) were found to capture the full mode I and II combinations. The most important factors affecting the fracture parameters were crack inclination angle, loading span and crack length. It was also found that the permutation of adherent materials in the left- and right-hand side of the BISBB specimen has no significant effect on the shape and size of the plastic damage zone, but the fracture parameters (in particular shear mode deformation (i.e., \(K_{\rm II}\))) are slightly sensitive to the type of adherent used for bounding the adhesive joint. As a conclusion, extensive numerical analyses performed on the BISBB specimen revealed the ability of this new test specimen for producing a complete range of tensile and shear mode mixities. Thus, the BISBB specimen can be proposed as a potential candidate specimen for fracture study of adhesive bounded joints under mixed mode  
Figure 13: Comparison of plastic zone size for different mode mixities and different permutations of adherent materials in the BISBB sample; (**a**) Al-Adhesive-Alumina, (**b**) Alumina-Adhesive-Al, (**c**) Al-Adhesive-Al, (**d**) Alumina-Adhesive-Alumina.  
loading conditions. However, the practical applicability of this specimen should also be investigated for such joints in future research works.  
Conceptualization, M.R.M.A.; methodology, M.R.M.A. and M.M.; validation, H.G.K. and M.M.; formal analysis, M.M. and H.G.K.; investigation, M.R.M.A.; M.M. and H.G.K.; writing--original draft preparation, M.R.M.A.; writing--review and editing, M.R.M.A.; visualization, H.G.K. and M.M.; supervision, M.R.M.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research received no external funding.  
This study did not involve tests on humans or animals.  
Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.  
The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.