We investigate the process of the slow unrolling of a roll of typical pressure-sensitive adhesive, Scotch tape, under its own weight. Probing the peeling velocities down to nm/s resolution, which is three orders of magnitudes lower than earlier measurements, we find that the speed is still non-zero. Moreover, the velocity is correlated to the relative humidity. A humidity increase leads to water uptake, making the adhesive weaker and easier to peel. At very low humidity, the adhesive becomes so stiff that it mainly responds elastically, leading to a peeling process akin to interfacial fracture. We provide a quantitative understanding of the peeling velocity in the two regimes.
The functionality of adhesives relies on their response under the application of a load. Yet, it has remained a challenge to quantitatively relate the macroscopic dynamics of peeling to the dissipative processes inside the adhesive layer. Here we investigate the peeling of a reversible adhesive made of a polymer gel, measuring the relationship between the peeling force, the peeling velocity, and the geometry of the interface at small-scale. Experiments are compared to a theory based on the linear viscoelastic response of the adhesive, augmented with an elastocapillary regularization approach. …
The modelling of the adherence energy during peeling of Pressure Sensitive Adhesives (PSA) has received much attention since the 1950's, uncovering several factors that aim at explaining their high adherence on most substrates, such as the softness and strong viscoelastic behaviour of the adhesive, the low thickness of the adhesive layer and its confinement by a rigid backing. The more recent investigation of adhesives by probe-tack methods also revealed the importance of cavitation and stringing mechanisms during debonding, underlining the influence of large deformations and of the related no…
We study the peeling process of a thin viscoelastic tape from a rigid substrate. Two different boundary conditions are considered at the interface between the tape and the substrate: stuck adhesion, and relative sliding in the presence of frictional shear stress. In the case of perfectly sticking interfaces, we found that the viscoelastic peeling behavior resembles the classical Kendall behavior of elastic tapes, with the elastic modulus given by the tape high-frequency viscoelastic modulus. Including the effect of frictional sliding, which occurs at the interface adjacent to the peeling front…
The double peeling of detachment of non-linear adhesive tapes from a flat Poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) surface has been investigated from both experimental and theoretical point of view. Double peeling tests show that, as the detachment process advances, the peeling angle stabilizes on a limiting value θlim corresponding to a critical pull-off force Fc above which the tape is completely detached from the substrate. This observed behavior is in good agreement with results obtained following the new theory of multiple peeling and taking into account the hardening-softening non-linear behavior…
Using a high-speed camera, we follow the propagation of the detachment front during the peeling of an adhesive tape from a flat surface. In a given range of peeling velocity, this front displays a multiscale unstable dynamics, entangling two well-separated spatiotemporal scales, which correspond to microscopic and macroscopic dynamical stick-slip instabilities. While the periodic release of the stretch energy of the whole peeled ribbon drives the classical macro-stick-slip, we show that the micro-stick-slip, due to the regular propagation of transverse dynamic fractures discovered by Thoroddse…
We investigate experimentally the adherence energy $Γ$ of model polyacrylate Pressure Sensitive Adhesives (PSAs) with combined large strain rheological measurements in uniaxial extension and an instrumented peel test. We develop a nonlinear model for such peel test which captures the dependence of $Γ(V)$ with peeling rate $V$ revealing the key role played by the extensional rheology. Our model explains in particular why traditional linear viscoelastic approaches correctly predict the slope of $Γ(V)$ curves for sufficiently elastic PSAs characterized by a simple rate-independent debonding crite…
We propose an approach to describe the propagation of a crack (or boundary of an adhesive contact) in a viscoelastic material which is only based on the consideration of the rheology of the material without the introduction of any additional dependency of the separation energy on the velocity of crack propagation. The suggested idea is illustrated with an example of kinetics of detachment of a flat-ended indenter from a viscoelastic medium. It is shown that under the given assumptions the crack propagation is accelerating until the critical configuration is reached and the contact detaches ins…
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…
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…
Is the maximum force required to detach a rigid sphere from a viscoelastic substrate dependent on the initial value of the contact radius? Experimental and theoretical investigations reported in the literature have given opposite responses. Here, we try to answer the above question by exploiting a fully deterministic model in which adhesive interactions are described by Lennard-Jones potential and the viscoelastic behaviour with the standard linear solid model. When the approach and retraction phases are performed under quasi-static conditions, the substrate behaves as an elastic medium and, a…
In an elegant and interesting theory of ultratough peeling of an elastic tape from a viscoelastic substrate, Afferrante and Carbone (2016) find that, in contrast to the classic elastic Kendall's theory, there are conditions for which the load for steady state peeling could be arbitrarily large in steady state peeling, at low angles of peeling - what they call "ultratough" peeling. It is here shown in fact that this occurs near critical speeds where the elastic energy term of Kendall's equation is balanced by the viscoelastic dissipation. Surprisingly, this seems to lead to toughness enhancemen…
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 …
Adhesive attachment systems consisting of multiple tapes or strands are commonly found in nature, for example in spider web anchorages or in mussel byssal threads, and their structure has been found to be ingeniously architected in order to optimize mechanical properties, in particular to maximize dissipated energy before full detachment. These properties emerge from the complex interplay between mechanical and geometric parameters, including tape stiffness, adhesive energy, attached and detached lengths and peeling angles, which determine the occurrence of three main mechanisms: elastic defor…
We present a novel theory of the adhesive contact of linear viscoelastic materials against rigid substrates moving at constant velocity. Despite the non-conservative behavior of the system, the closure equation of the contact problem can be rigorously formulated in the form of a local energy balance. In the case of adhesiveless contacts, this is equivalent to enforce the stationarity of the total energy stored into the viscoelastic material. However, in the presence of interfacial adhesion, the appearance of non-conservative terms leads to different values of the energy release rates G1 and G2…
When adhesive elastomeric materials slide over hard rough surfaces at low velocities, there are two primary dissipative mechanisms that control how friction changes with sliding velocity: viscoelastic dissipation and adhesive dissipation. To distinguish the contribution of these dissipative mechanisms we have measured frictional shear stresses for crosslinked polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) on three different rough surfaces of similar surface chemistry across nearly six decades of sliding velocity. The results show that the observed friction is dominated by adhesive dissipation, rather than viscoe…
The adhesive behaviour of biological attachment structures such as spider web anchorages is usually studied using single or multiple peeling models involving "tapes", i.e. one-dimensional contacts elements. This is an oversimplification for many practical problems, since the actual delamination process requires the modelling of complex two-dimensional adhesive elements. To achieve this, we develop a numerical approach to simulate the detachment of an elastic membrane of finite size from a substrate, using a 3D cohesive law. The model is validated using existing analytical results for simple ge…
Hyperelastic materials models are well established to describe the non-linear stress-strain relations of elastomers. In this paper, a polyurethane adhesive is considered as an exemplary material and subjected to tensile, compressive and shear tests. Conventional hyperelastic models are unable to capture the mechanical behaviour satisfyingly: If the model agrees with the test results at large strains, it underestimates the stiffness at low strains significantly. We propose a model extension to describe a kind of exponential decay of stiffness which bears some similarity with a specific model de…
We investigate the influence of viscoelastic nature of the adhesive on the intermittent peel front dynamics by extending a recently introduced model for peeling of an adhesive tape. As time and rate-dependent deformation of the adhesives are measured in stationary conditions, a crucial step in incorporating the viscoelastic effects applicable to unstable intermittent peel dynamics is the introduction of a dynamization scheme that eliminates the explicit time dependence in terms of dynamical variables. We find contrasting influences of viscoelastic contribution in different regions of tape mass…
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…
Viscoelasticity and rate-dependent adhesion of soft matter lead to difficulties in modeling the 'relatively simple' problem of a rigid sphere in contact with a viscoelastic half-space. For this reason, approximations in describing surface interactions and viscous dissipation processes are usually adopted in the literature. Here, we develop a fully deterministic model in which adhesive interactions are described by Lennard-Jones potential and the material behaviour with the standard linear solid model. Normal loading-unloading cycles are carried out under different driving conditions. When load…
Deep learning-based prediction of time-resolved adhesive forces in viscoelastic Hertzian contacts
Chair of Cyber-Physical Systems in Mechanical Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin（柏林工业大学机械工程系网络物理系统主席）；TriboDynamics Lab, Department of Mechanics, Mathematics and Management, Polytechnic University of Bari（巴里理工大学力学、数学与管理系摩擦动力学实验室）
While of paramount importance in material science, the dynamics of cracks still lacks a complete physical explanation. The transition from their slow creep behavior to a fast propagation regime is a notable key, as it leads to full material failure if the size of a fast avalanche reaches that of the system. We here show that a simple thermodynamics approach can actually account for such complex crack dynamics, and in particular for the non-monotonic force-velocity curves commonly observed in mechanical tests on various materials. We consider a thermally activated failure process that is couple…
