Adhesive contact of randomly rough surfaces: experimental and numerical investigations

G Violano,A Chateauminois,L Afferrante

doi:10.1088/1757-899x/1038/1/012049

Abstract

The contact mechanics of soft matters is strongly affected by short-range adhesive interactions, which can lead to large deformations and contact instabilities.In this work, we present both experimental and numerical investigations of the adhesive contact between soft elastic bodies with a Greenwood and Williamson (GW)-like roughness. To investigate the coalescence of neighbour contact spots, surfaces have been designed with overlapping spherical asperities. Normal contact experiments are carried out by using a home-built device. Numerical simulations are performed with the Interacting and Coalescing Hertzian Asperities (ICHA) model, conveniently modified to take account of adhesion according to the Johnson, Kendall & Roberts (JKR) theory.

Highlights

Adhesive contact of soft elastic bodies is of great interest in several engineering applications, ranging from bionispired adhesives [1, 2], soft robots [3, 4], stretchable electronics [5, 6].Surface roughness is known to widely affect the interfacial properties of materials
The classical contact mechanics theories are used to describe the simple case of the contact between two elastic spheres
We experimentally investigate the adhesive contact of a smooth glass lens and a rubber substrate with a well-defined rough surface

Summary

Introduction

Adhesive contact of soft elastic bodies is of great interest in several engineering applications, ranging from bionispired adhesives [1, 2], soft robots [3, 4], stretchable electronics [5, 6].Surface roughness is known to widely affect the interfacial properties of materials. [12, 13] showed that neglecting lateral interaction of asperities and coalescence of merging contact spots can lead to a significant underestimation of the contact area even at very small load. Persson [14] developed a theory of adhesion between an elastic solid and a hard randomly rough substrate taking into account that partial contact may occur between the solids at all length scales.

Results

Conclusion