Abstract
In this paper, both photoelasticity and moiré interferometry were successively incorporated with finite element method to investigate the predicted thermal stresses and lateral displacement of bonded structures calculated from different theories. It was found that the distributions of moment and transverse force play significant roles in making different values of thermal stresses in the adherends by authors' and Suhir's 1986 theories. On the other hand, the values of lateral displacement obtained from different theories are almost identical. © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.