Adhesive bonding is now commonly used in aircraft, cars, boats, etc. In these applications, thin panels are often bonded. In such thin structures, heterogeneous mechanical loading along the bondline edge (or potential crack front) is likely to arise due to 3D structural effects. The crack front and its vicinity is a special region, in that it is where structural properties of the adherend material meet those of the adhesive (discontinuity). To investigate the stress distribution in this region, we have observed the deflection of a flexible adherend in an asymmetric wedge bonded joint loaded in Mode I. A sensitive laser profilometry technique was used to observe the main vertical beam displacement and curvature along the length, as well as the resulting transverse, or anticlastic effect, due to Poisson's ratio. From this analysis is evaluated the heterogeneous tensile stress distribution in the adhesive in the vicinity of the crack front.