The majority of the load transfer of an adhesively-bonded joint is accomplished by the nonlinear behavior of the adhesive. In this paper, the torque transmission capability and shear stress distribution of the tubular single lap joint were calculated by incorporating the nonlinear shear properties of the adhesive. The nonlinear shear properties were represented by three different mathematical models such as two-parameter exponential,linear perfectly-plastic and multilinear strain-softening approximations. From the analyses and experiments, it was found that all the analyses with nonlinear approximations predicted the torque transmission capabilities accurately, but the two-parameter exponential approximation gave the best predictions with the simplest form for use in numerical calculation.