A comprehensive overview of adhesive bonding, providing both basic knowledge of polymer adhesives as well as insights into their mechanical and ageing properties.
The book is unique in its up-to-date, self-contained summary of recent developments and in its integration of the theory, synthesis and mechanical properties of adhesive joints as well as their applications. Well-structured throughout, the first chapter introduces the initial state of adhesive joints and their formation, while subsequent chapters discuss the ageing and failure as well as the weathering of adhesive joints. In addition the issue of long-term behavior and lifetime predictions are considered. The text is rounded off by a look at future technological advances.
The result is an essential reference for a wide range of disciplines


Wulff Possart holds the Chair for Adhesion and Interphases in Polymers at the Saarland University in Saarbrucken, Germany. Having obtained his PhD in Physics from the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in Berlin and his habilitation from the University Potsdam, Germany, he spent most of his research career at the Academy of Sciences and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Materials Research in Bremen, Germany, before taking up his present professorship at the Saarland University.
Professor Possart has authored more than 140 scientific publications in the fields of adhesion, polymer science, surface science and ageing. He has received prestigious scientific awards from the Adhesion Societies in the US, Great Britain and France as well as multiple guest professorships in France,the honorary professorship from the Heilongjiang Academy of Science and the visiting professorship at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology in China.

Markus Brede is head of the department Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Materials Research in Bremen, Germany. His main field of activity covers mechanics and mechanical behavior of adhesive joints with respect to design and lifetime of bonded structures. He has authored more than 70 papers related to mechanical behavior of adhesive joints.
Markus Brede obtained his PhD in physics from the University of Gottingen and spent several years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, USA) and the Max-Planck-Institute for Iron Research in Dusseldorf, Germany. At that time his main research interests included fracture and plasticity of silicon, inter-metallic alloys and the development of new iron-chromium-aluminum alloys with high temperature corrosion resistance.