How contact area decreases under shear load in soft bodies?

A very good paper has just been published in JMPS by  J.C. Mergel, J. Scheibert, R.A. Sauer "Contact with coupled adhesion and friction: Computational framework, applications, and new insights". it shows the results of numerical simulations with soft bodies sheared by a tangential force. There is a vivacious discussion in Literature if the contact area reduces due to adhesion or due to large deformation. Finally, Mergel and co-authors clarify that both the phenomena influence the rate of reduction, being adhesion more crucial at light loads and large deformations more crucial at large loads. That still remains to answer the question of what is the parameter that governs the transition from "adhesion" to "large deformation" controlled reduction, but this paper clearly shows that the two effects both play an important role.       

The link at the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S002250962030418X?...

Few more links on the topic:

https://www.pnas.org/content/115/3/471.short 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022509620302908

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022509618306112

https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.99.053005 

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.214301

A. Papangelo RG profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Antonio_Papangelo