<p>Fiber-reinforced adhesives are primarily employed in large-scale and highly stressed bonded joints, such as those found in the manufacture of rotor blades for wind energy systems. The subject of the present paper is the usage of non-destructive micro-computed tomography (µ-CT) to gain insights into the causes and effects of the alignment of short glass fibers in structural adhesives resulting from the application process, such as the formation of shell and core zones or the fiber orientation distribution pattern. In order to perform mechanical tests on samples with known specific fiber orientations for investigating adhesive properties that are highly dependent on fiber orientation, the three-dimensional structure of pressed adhesive plates used for sample production was determined beforehand. In that context, results from dynamic fatigue tests on notched tensile specimens with fiber orientations of 0, 30, 60 and 90°, respectively, are presented as well as µ-CT investigations of the notch area with focus on the detection of micro-crack formation. Using prepared adhesive micro-samples from rip plaques at various parameterized application processes as well as laboratory scale adhesive beads, the flow behavior and fiber orientation of the short glass fiber-reinforced adhesive could be determined. In addition, an algorithm for fiber reconstruction was used to determine the fiber orientation and calculate the corresponding orientation tensors components <i>A</i>_<i>ij</i> based on CT datasets. Characteristic values from mechanical tests were used as data for numerical investigations by X-FEM simulation with focus on the crack behavior.</p>