In both non-flat cases, the maximum tensile peel stress is significantly higher than the maximum shear stress. For models with A/h=0.5, the maximum tensile peel stress of 0.45 times the remote tensile stress occurs in regions II, where the initial cracking was observed in our experiments. Peel stress in region III is mainly compressive, so failure is not expected to initiate in this region. The initial failure of such specimens around 3300 N suggests peel strength of 49 MPa. This estimate is in a good agreement with the estimate of 54 MPa from tensile experiment of adhesively connected bars (Section 2.1). The maximum tensile peel stress in the model with A/h=-0.5 occurs in regions III at intensity approximately 1.43 times the remote tensile stress, and the initial failure of such specimens occurs around 800 N. As observed in the experiments, this initial failure will result in a drop in the associated load–displacement curve but not the complete loss of load bearing capacity of the joint. Since these two kinds of specimen display substantially different strengths and failed at similar values of peak computed peel stress, in the next section we provisionally adopted computed peak peel stress as a failure criterion, in order to predict the strength of other geometries