Since the surface roughness of adherends affects much the strength of adhesivelybonded joints, the effect of surface roughness on the fatigue life of adhesively bonded tubular single lap joints was investigated analytically and experimentally by fatigue torsion test. The stiffness of the interfacial layer between adherends and adhesive was modeled as a normal statistical distribution function of surface roughness of adherends. From the investigation, it was found that the optimum surface roughness of adherends for the fatigue strength of tubular single lap joints was dependent on bondthickness and applied load.