Truss structures are a stiff, economical, and efficient lightweight design, the limiting factor of these structures are usually the load transfer elements. This paper presents an analytical design method for optimized adhesive tubular lap joints between CFRP tubes and aluminium inserts. The analytically optimized design agrees very well with the numerical simulations and experimental results. Although the experiments show a highly non-linear behaviour, where a linear elastic correlation is expected, the total load capacity is only reached when the adhesive is fully plasticised.
