The failure mechanism of scarf joints with a series of angles and brittle-ductile adhesives subjected to uniaxial tensile loads is analyzed by using a numerical method which employs a cohesive zone model (CZM) with a bilinear shape in mixed-mode (mode Ⅰ and Ⅱ). The adopted methodology is validated via comparisons between the present simulated results and the existing experimental measurements, which illustrate that the load-bearing capacity increases as the scarf angle decreases. More important, it is observed that the failure of the joint is governed by not only the ultimate tensile loads, but also the applied tensile displacement until complete failure, which is related to the brittle-ductile properties of the adhesive layer. In addition, failure energy, which is defined by using the area of the load-displacement curve of the joint, is adopted to estimate the joint strength. Subsequently, the numerical results show that the strength of the joint adopting ductile adhesive with higher failure energy is higher than that of the joint using brittle adhesive with lower failure energy.
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