The effect of surface roughness on the adhesion of elastic solids

By B. Persson, E. T. Iff, FZ-Juelich, Juelich, G. I. S. F. A. Studies, Trieste, Italy Infm, U. Sissa, Italy Center for Theoretical Physics, Italy. 2001

562 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the influence of surface roughness on the adhesion of elastic solids. Most real surfaces have roughness on many different length scales, and this fact is taken into account in our analysis. We consider in detail the case when the surface roughness can be described as a self-affine fractal, and show that when the fractal dimension Df>2.5, the adhesion force may vanish, or be at least strongly reduced. We consider the block-substrate pull-off force as a function of roughness, and find a partial detachment transition preceding a full detachment one. The theory is in good qualitative agreement with experimental data.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics, Mechanics of Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/067615e9c4376463cdf8cefdf521ba53174952ac

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Mechanics of Materials

Citations in the corpus

Modeling and simulation in tribology across scales: An overview (2018, background): “Looking at other theoretical and non-deterministic models of multi-asperity contacts, in some of the early contributions, Persson and Tosatti considered adhesion through a fractal representation of surfa ce roughness and showed that adhesion dropped signific antly at higher fractal dimensions [560].”
Recent advances in gecko adhesion and friction mechanisms and development of gecko-inspired dry adhesive surfaces (2013, background): “Fuller and Tabor [58] developed a contact model for elastic solids to describe the effect of roughness in reducing the adhesion force as the real contact area decreases with increasing surface roughness.”
Dense flows of cohesive granular materials (2008, unknown): “The asperities decrease the effective surface where the short-range van der Waals force is significant (see Fuller & Tabor 1975; Thornton 1997; Tomas 2004), and, in the case of humid grains they give rise to different scales of liquid menisci (Bocquet et al. 2002).”
Friction and energy dissipation mechanisms in adsorbed molecules and molecularly thin films (2012, background): “The fact that interlocking asperities had been discounted in the 1970s did not preclude a contribution to wearless friction arising from commensurability effects of atoms and atomic corrugation at contacting interfaces [312,313].”
Adhesion and surface forces in polymer tribology—A review (2018, background): “In 1975, Fuller and Tabor published a classic paper on the adhesion between elastic solids and the effect of roughness in reducing the adhesion [55]; it was also concluded that a relatively small surface roughness could completely remove the adhesion interaction.”
The Effect of Atomic-Scale Roughness on the Adhesion of Nanoscale Asperities: A Combined Simulation and Experimental Investigation (2013, methodology): “The adhesion of rough surfaces with an assumed geometry similar to that used by Greenwood and Williamson was later examined by Fuller and Tabor (for the JKR limit of adhesion [10]) and Maugis (for the DMT limit [18]).”