The increasing use of structural adhesives in industry encourages the need for a detailed description of their mechanical behaviour. In this paper, a structural adhesive, named BETAMATE 1496V (TM), which has been specially designed for applications in the automotive industry (crashworthiness) has been studied. The propose is to obtain as near a possible, a complete description of the mechanical behaviour by means of new measurement techniques, applied over a large range of strain rates using different kinds of loading devices. These results lead to important findings which we believe will have an impact on finite element modeling. (C) Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011