In this study, the adhesion-detachment behaviour of a gecko-inspired adhesive pad was investigated to understand the on/off switching mechanisms of adhesion in gecko feet. A macroscopic spatula model was fabricated using silicone rubber, and adhesion tests combining lateral sliding and vertical debonding were conducted. It was observed that the contact state and the adhesion force of the pad vary considerably with the direction of lateral sliding prior to debonding, and that the pad achieves adhesion during debonding even when it loses contact due to excess lateral sliding. These results explain the mechanisms behind the on/off switching and stable adhesion of gecko feet, and suggest the possibility of developing new-generation adhesives capable of switchable adhesion.
A continuum-based computational contact model is employed to study coupled adhesion and friction in gecko spatulae. Nonlinear finite element analysis is carried out to simulate spatula peeling from a rigid substrate. It is shown that the "frictional adhesion" behavior, until now only observed from seta to toe levels, is also present at the spatula level. It is shown that for sufficiently small spatula pad thickness, the spatula detaches at a constant angle known as the critical detachment angle irrespective of the peeling and shaft angles. The spatula reaches the same energy states at the jump…
The present work investigates the normal and tangential peeling behaviour of a gecko spatula using a coupled adhesion-friction model. The objective is to explain the strong attachment and easy detachment behaviour of the spatulae as well as to understand the principles behind their optimum design. Using nonlinear finite element computations, it is shown that during tangentially-constrained peeling the partial sliding of the spatula pad near the peeling front stretches the spatula, thus increasing the strain energy and leading to high pull-off forces. The model is used to investigate the influe…
Various adhesion mechanisms that have been understood in the field of synthetic adhesives are described and these are linked with situations relevant to fouling issues. The review mainly deals with mechanical aspects of adhesion phenomena, with an emphasis on the role of the elasticity of the bodies, called substrata, attached by adhesive. The consequences of thin film geometry of the adhesive material are described, such as various heterogeneous deformations upon traction. The importance of the bonding process is discussed, as well as some examples of non-wetting surfaces. As seen from a dist…
A simple but general analysis of stability of axis-symmetric adhesive contacts is provided. Adhesion is considered in the JKR-approximation. Depending on the shape of the contacting bodies, various scenarios are possible, including vanishing adhesive force, complete contact as well as transitions between these states.
For the adhesive contact of elastomers, we propose expressions to quantify the impact of viscoelastic response on effective adhesion energy as a function of contact edge velocity. The expressions we propose are simple analytical functionals of the creep response and should be suitable for experimental data analysis in terms of measured rheologies. We also emphasize the role of the coupling between local stress field at the contact edge and the macroscopic remote loading (far field). We show that the contrast between growing and receding contact originates from the impact of viscoelastic respon…
Surface roughness is known to easily suppress the adhesion of elastic surfaces. Here a simple model for the contact of \emph{viscoelastic} rough surfaces with significant levels of adhesion is presented. This approach is derived from our previous model [E. Barthel and G. Haiat {\em Langmuir}, 18 9362 2002] for the adhesive contact of viscoelastic spheres. For simplicity a simple loading/unloading history (infinitely fast loading and constant pull-out velocity) is assumed. The model provides approximate analytical expressions for the asperity response and exhibits the full viscoelastic adhesive…
We discuss how surface roughness influence the adhesion between elastic solids. We introduce a Tabor number which depends on the length scale or magnification, and which gives information about the nature of the adhesion at different length scales. We consider two limiting cases relevant for (a) elastically hard solids with weak adhesive interaction (DMT-limit) and (b) elastically soft solids or strong adhesive interaction (JKR-limit). For the former cases we study the nature of the adhesion using different adhesive force laws ($F\sim u^{-n}$, $n=1.5-4$, where $u$ is the wall-wall separation).…
When quickly detaching an elastomer from a counterface, viscoelasticity dramatically increases the perceived adhesion relative to its adiabatic or equilibrium value. Here, we report simulations on the sticking contact between a rigid cylinder and a viscoelastic half space revealing a maximum in the work of adhesion at intermediate pull-off velocities. Maximum tensile forces yet increase monotonically with the pull-off speed and the crack-tip speed in accordance with the Persson-Brener approach. As predicted theoretically, the fracture mode transitions from interfacial crack propagation to quas…
The effective adhesive properties of heterogeneous thin films are characterized through a combined experimental and theoretical investigation. By bridging scales, we show how variations of elastic or adhesive properties at the microscale can significantly affect the effective peeling behavior of the adhesive at the macroscale. Our study reveals three elementary mechanisms in heterogeneous systems involving front propagation: (i) patterning the elastic bending stiffness of the film produces fluctuations of the driving force resulting in dramatically enhanced resistance to peeling; (ii) optimize…
Bioinspired artificial surfaces with tailored adhesive properties have attracted significant interest. While fibrillar adhesive pads mimicking gecko feet are optimized for strong reversible adhesion, monolithic microsphere arrays mimicking the slippery zone of the pitchers of carnivorous plants of the genus Nepenthes show anti-adhesive properties even against tacky counterpart surfaces. In contrast to the influence of topography, the influence of relative humidity (RH) on adhesion has been widely neglected. Some previous works deal with the influence of RH on the adhesive performance of fibril…
We investigate the contact of a rigid cylindrical punch with an adhesive beam mounted on flexible end supports. Adhesion is modeled through an adhesive zone model. The resulting Fredholm integral equation of the first kind is solved by a Galerkin projection method in terms of Chebyshev polynomials. Results are reported for several combinations of adhesive strengths, beam thickness, and support flexibilities characterized through torsional and vertical translational spring stiffnesses. Special attention is paid to the important extreme cases of clamped and simply supported beams. The popular Jo…
We study the interaction between capillary forces and deformation in the context of a deformable capillary adhesive: a clamped, tense membrane is adhered to a rigid substrate by the surface tension of a liquid droplet. We find that the equilibrium adhesive force for this elastocapillary adhesive is significantly enhanced in comparison to the capillary adhesion between rigid plates. In particular, the equilibrium adhesion force is orders of magnitude greater when the membrane is sufficiently deformed to contact the substrate. From a dynamic perspective, however, the formation of a fluid-filled …
Tough adhesive hydrogels find broad applications in engineering and medicine. Such hydrogels feature high resistance against both cohesion and adhesion failure. The superior fracture properties may, however, deteriorate when the hydrogels swell upon exposure of water. The underlying correlation between the polymer fraction and fracture properties of tough adhesive hydrogels remains largely unexplored. Here we study how the cohesion and adhesion energies of a tough adhesive hydrogel evolve with the swelling process. The results reveal a similar scaling law of the two quantities on the polymer f…
We study the size-topology relations in random packings of dry adhesive polydisperse microspheres with Gaussian and lognormal size distributions through a geometric tessellation. We find that the dependence of the neighbour number on the centric particle size is always quasilinear, independent of the size distribution, the size span or interparticle adhesion. The average local packing fraction as a function of normalized particle size for different size variances is well regressed on the same profile, which grows to larger values as the relative strength of adhesion decreases. As for the local…
We explore adhesive loose packings of dry small spherical particles of micrometer size using 3D discrete-element simulations with adhesive contact mechanics. A dimensionless adhesion parameter ($Ad$) successfully combines the effects of particle velocities, sizes and the work of adhesion, identifying a universal regime of adhesive packings for $Ad>1$. The structural properties of the packings in this regime are well described by an ensemble approach based on a coarse-grained volume function that includes correlations between bulk and contact spheres. Our theoretical and numerical results predi…
We systematically generate a large set of random micro-particle packings over a wide range of adhesion and friction by means of adhesive contact dynamics simulation. The ensemble of generated packings covers a range of volume fraction $ϕ$ from $0.135 \pm 0.007$ to $0.639 \pm 0.004$, and of coordination number $Z$ from $2.11 \pm 0.03$ to $6.40 \pm 0.06$. We determine $ϕ$ and $Z$ at four limits (random close packing, random loose packing, adhesive close packing, and adhesive loose packing), and find a universal equation of state $ϕ(Z)$ to describe packings with arbitrary adhesion and friction. F…
Contact unit size reduction is a widely studied mechanism as a means to improve adhesion in natural fibrillar systems, such as those observed in beetles or geckos. However, these animals also display complex structural features in the way the contact is subdivided in a hierarchical manner. Here, we study the influence of hierarchical fibrillar architectures on the load distribution over the contact elements of the adhesive system, and the corresponding delamination behaviour. We present an analytical model to derive the load distribution in a fibrillar system, including hierarchical splitting …
We study the adhesion of an elastic sheet on a rigid spherical substrate. Gauss'Theorema Egregium shows that this operation necessarily generates metric distortions (i.e. stretching) as well as bending. As a result, a large variety of contact patterns ranging from simple disks to complex branched shapes are observed as a function of both geometrical and material properties. We describe these different morphologies as a function of two non-dimensional parameters comparing respectively bending and stretching energies to adhesion. A complete configuration diagram is finally proposed.
The packing of charged micron-sized particles was investigated using discrete element simulations based on adhesive contact dynamic model. The formation process and the final obtained structures of ballistic packings are studied to show the effect of interparticle Coulomb force. It was found that increasing the charge on particles causes a remarkable decrease of the packing volume fraction ϕand the average coordination number Z, indicating a looser and chainlike structure. Force-scaling analysis shows that the long-range Coulomb interaction changes packing structures through its influence on p…
In biomimetic and biological systems, interactions between surfaces are often mediated by adhesive molecules, nanoparticles, or colloids dispersed in the surrounding solution. We present here a general, statistical-mechanical model for two surfaces that interact via adhesive particles. The effective, particle-mediated interaction potential of the surfaces is obtained by integrating over the particles' degrees of freedom in the partition function. Interestingly, the effective adhesion energy of the surfaces exhibits a maximum at intermediate particle concentrations, and is considerably smaller …
The force of adhesion of a rotationally symmetric indenter and an elastic half-space is analyzed analytically and numerically using an extension of the method of dimensionality reduction (MDR) for superimposed normal/tangential adhesive contacts. In particular, the dependency of the critical adhesion force on the simultaneously applied tangential force is obtained and the relevant dimensionless parameters of the problem are identified. The developed method is applicable straightforwardly to adhesive contacts of any bodies of revolution.
In the present note, we start by observing that in the classical JKR theory of adhesion, using the usual Hertzian approximations, the pull-off load grows unbounded when the clearance goes to zero in a conformal "ball in socket" geometry. To consider the case of the conforming geometry, we use a recent rigorous general extension of the original JKR energetic derivation proposed by the first author which necessitates only of adhesionless solutions, and an approximate adhesionless solution given in the literature. We find that depending on a single governing parameter of the problem, theta=DeltaR…
Soft supramolecular materials are promising for the design of innovative and highly tunable adhesives. These materials are composed of polymer chains functionalized by strongly interacting moieties, sometimes called "stickers". In order to systematically investigate the effect of the presence of associative groups on the debonding properties of a supramolecular adhesive, a series of supramolecular model systems has been characterized by probe-tack tests. These model materials, composed of linear and low dispersity poly(butylacrylate) chains functionalized in the middle by a single tri-urea sti…
A self-consistent model is developed to investigate attachment / detachment kinetics of two soft, deformable microspheres with irregular surface and coated with flexible binding ligands. The model highlights how the microscale binding kinetics of these ligands as well as the attractive/repulsive potential of the charged surface affects the static deformed configuration of the spheres. It is shown that in the limit of smooth, neutral charged surface (i.e., the Debye length, $κ\rightarrow \infty $), interacting via elastic binders (i.e., the stiffness coefficient, $λ\rightarrow 0$) the adhesion …
The behaviour and fate of tissue cells is controlled by the rigidity and geometry of their adhesive environment, possibly through forces localized to sites of adhesion. We introduce a mechanical model that predicts cellular force distributions for cells adhering to adhesive patterns with different geometries and rigidities. For continuous adhesion along a closed contour, forces are predicted to be localized to the corners. For discrete sites of adhesion, the model predicts the forces to be mainly determined by the lateral pull of the cell contour. With increasing distance between two neighbori…
Recently, there has been some debate over the effect of adhesion on the contact of rough surfaces. Classical asperity theories predict, in agreement with experimental observations, that adhesion is always destroyed by roughness except if the amplitude of the same is extremely small, and the materials are particularly soft. This happens for all fractal dimensions. However, these theories are limited due to the geometrical simplification, which may be particularly strong in conditions near full contact. We introduce therefore a simple model for adhesion, which aims at being rigorous near full co…
Recently, tribologists have shown increasing interest in rate-dependent phenomena occurring in viscoelastic fractures. However, in some cases, conflicting results are obtained despite the use of similar theoretical models. For this reason, we try to shed light on the effects that long and short-range adhesion has on the pull-off force in the contact of viscoelastic media by exploiting a recently developed numerical model. We find that, in the limit of long-range adhesion, the unloading velocity has little effect on the pull-off force, which is close to the value predicted by Bradley for rigid …
Thermodynamics tells us to expect underwater contact between two hydrophobic surfaces to result in stronger adhesion compared to two hydrophilic surfaces. However, presence of water changes not only energetics, but also the dynamic process of reaching a final state, which couples solid deformation and liquid evacuation. These dynamics can create challenges for achieving strong underwater adhesion/friction, which affects diverse fields including soft robotics, bio-locomotion and tire traction. Closer investigation, requiring sufficiently precise resolution of film evacuation while simultaneousl…
With a novel 3D discrete-element method specially developed with adhesive contact mechanics, random loose packings of uniform spherical micron-sized particles are fully investigated. The results show that large velocity, large size or weak adhesion can produce a relatively dense packing when other parameters are fixed, and these combined effects can be characterized by a dimensionless adhesion parameter ( $Ad=ω/2ρ_pU^2_0R$). Four regimes are identified based on the value of $Ad$: RCP regime with $Ad<\sim 0.01$; RLP regime with $\sim 0.01<Ad<1$; adhesion regime with $1<Ad<20$ and an asymptotic …
We consider a theoretical model for membranes with adhesive receptors, or stickers, that are actively switched between two conformational states. In their 'on'-state, the stickers bind to ligands in an apposing membrane, whereas they do not interact with the ligands in their 'off'-state. We show that the adhesiveness of the membranes depends sensitively on the rates of the conformational switching process. This dependence is reflected in a resonance at intermediate switching rates, which can lead to large membrane separations and unbinding. Our results may provide insights into novel mechanism…
In this work a Lattice Boltzmann Immersed Boundary method is used for predicting the dynamics of rigid and deformable adhesive micro carriers (1 um) navigating a capillary by the size of 10 um with 20% hematocrit. Red cells and particles are modeled as a collection of mass spring elements responding to a bending potential, an elastic potential and total enclosed area conservation constraint. Furthermore, particle surfaces are uniformly decorated with adhesive molecules (ligands) interacting with receptors disposed on the walls. Particle adhesion is modeled as a short range ligad receptor inter…
Switchable adhesives have the potential to improve the manufacturing and recycling of parts and to enable new modes of motility for soft robots. Here, we demonstrate magnetically-switchable adhesion of a two-phase composite to non-magnetic objects. The composite's continuous phase is a silicone elastomer, and the dispersed phase is a magneto-rheological fluid. The composite is simple to prepare, and to mould to different shapes. When a magnetic field is applied, the magneto-rheological fluid develops a yield stress, which dramatically enhances the composite's adhesive properties. We demonstrat…
Developing adhesives whose bond strength can be externally manipulated is a topic of considerable interest for practical and scientific purposes. In this work, we propose a method of controlling the adhesion force of a regular fluid, such as water and/or glycerol, confined between two parallel plates by applying an external electric field. Our results show the possibility of enhancing or diminishing the bond strength of the liquid sample by appropriately tuning the intensity and direction of the electric current generated by the applied electric field. Furthermore, we verify that, for a given …
Adhesive contact between a thin elastic sheet and a substrate in a liquid environment arises in a range of biological, physical and technological applications. By considering the dynamics of this process that naturally couples fluid flow, long wavelength elastic deformations and microscopic adhesion, and solving the resulting partial differential equation numerically, we uncover the short-time dynamics of the onset of adhesion and the long-time dynamics of a steady propagating adhesion front. Simple scaling laws corroborate our results for characteristic waiting-time for adhesive contact, as w…
Adhesive [e.g. van der Waals] forces were not generally taken into account in contact mechanics until 1971, when Johnson, Kendall and Roberts (JKR) generalized Hertz' solution for an elastic sphere using an energetic argument which we now recognize to be analogous to that used in linear elastic fracture mechanics. A significant result is that the load-displacement relation exhibits instabilities in which approaching bodies `jump in' to contact, whereas separated bodies `jump out' at a tensile `pull-off force'. The JKR approach has since been widely used in other geometries, but at small length…
We present theoretical arguments, based on linear elasticity and thermodynamics, to show that interfacial tangential stresses in sliding adhesive contacts does not affet at all the adhesive behavior of the system, which then follows the classical JKR solution. Our finding explains the experimental observation of Vorvolakos and Chaudhury in 2003, who found that the contact area of a PDMS sphere remains constant during sliding and is in agreement with the JKR solution, at least up to velocity of 1mm/s, and of Carpick et al. Carpick, who observed that the friction force between a platinum-coated …
Liquids play an important role in adhesion and sliding friction. They behave as lubricants in human bodies especially in the joints. However, in many biological attachment systems they acts like adhesives, e.g. facilitating insects to move on ceilings or vertical walls. Here we use molecular dynamics to study how liquids confined at the nanoscale influence the adhesion between solid bodies with smooth and rough surfaces. We show that a monolayer of liquid may strongly affect the adhesion.
The dynamics of an adhesive two-dimensional vesicle doublet under various flow conditions is investigated numerically using a high-order, adaptive-in-time boundary integral method. In a quiescent flow, two nearby vesicles move slowly towards each other under the adhesive potential, pushing out fluid between them to form a vesicle doublet at equilibrium. A lubrication analysis on such draining of a thin film gives the dependencies of draining time on adhesion strength and separation distance that are in good agreement with numerical results. In a planar extensional flow we find a stable vesicle…
Cardiac myocytes are the fundamental cells composing the heart muscle. The propagation of electric signals and chemical quantities through them is responsible for their nonlinear contraction and dilatation. In this study, a theoretical model and a finite element formulation are proposed for the simulation of adhesive contact interactions between myocytes across the so-called gap junctions. A multi-field interface constitutive law is proposed for their description, integrating the adhesive and contact mechanical response with their electrophysiological behavior. From the computational point of …
We study the adhesive contact between elastic solids with randomly rough, self affine fractal surfaces. We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulation results for the interfacial stress distribution and the wall-wall separation. We compare the MD results for the relative contact area and the average interfacial separation, with the prediction of the contact mechanics theory of Persson. We find good agreement between theory and the simulation results. We apply the theory to the system studied by Benz et al. involving polymer in contact with polymer, but in this case the adhesion gives only a sma…
As recently suggested in an interestring and stimulating paper by Menga, Carbone & Dini (MCD), applying fracture mechanics energy concepts for the case of a sliding adhesive contact, imposing also the shear stress is constant at the interface and equal to a material constant (as it seems in experiments), leads to a increase of contact area which instead is never observed. We add that the rigorous MCD theory also predict a size effect and hence a distortion of the JKR curve during sliding which is also not observed in experiments. Finally, a simpler example with the pure mode I contact case, le…
