Pull-off of viscoelastic spherical contact

Abstract

This paper studied the adhesive contact between a viscoelastic sphere and a rigid plane, and presented a dimensionless first-order differential equation to directly describe the relationship between the applied load and the contact radius. By adopting a combination strategy, the singularity of Muller’s dimensionless first-order differential equation was avoided well. To study the dependence of the pull-off force on the initial applied load, a table-based linear and logarithmic interpolation method was presented to determine the contact radius at the pull-off. The dependence of the square root (ζmax) of the ratio of the effective adhesion work at the upper bound to the equilibrium adhesion work on Muller’s parameter β and material constant n was deduced theoretically. And the relationship between the contact radius at the upper bound and ζmax was also deduced theoretically. In addition, the ratio of the pull-off force to the maximum pull-off force was determined to be cubic function of the ratio of the contact radius at the pull-off to that at the upper bound numerically. If β, n and the initial applied load were given, utilizing these relationships, the pull-off force and the maximum pull-off force could be predicted well. Lastly, Violano-Chateauminois-Afferrante JKR-like formula for the pull-off force and the upper bound was verified.

Keywords:

• Viscoelasticity
• adhesion
• JKR (Johnson-Kendall-Roberts) model

View correction statement:

Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/01694243.2024.2345534).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Doctoral Scientific Research Foundation of Huangshan University (2022xkjq014).