Adhesion and fracture; adhesion; contact mechanics; friction;

 Our research has just been published in Journal of Adhesion. It deals with axisymmetric frictionless adhesive contact problem for a spherical indenter pressed against an isotropic elastic incompressible half-space under equibiaxial stretching is studied in the framework of the generalized Johnson{Kendall{Roberts (JKR) theory, which accounts for the effect of weak coupling between fracture modes I and II by means of a phenomenological mode-mixity function. The model predicts that contact area can withstand a larger level of the substrate stretch under moderate pre-pulling force.

A. Papangelo, J. Scheibert, R. Sahli, G. Pallares, and M. Ciavarella
Phys. Rev. E 99, 053005 - https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.99.053005

Journal of The Royal Society Interface 16(151), February 2019.    DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2018.0738

Michele Ciavarella Junki Joe Junki Joe Antonio Papangelo James Richard Barber

Just published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface

Ciavarella M, Joe J, Papangelo A, Barber JR. 2019 The role of adhesion in contact mechanics. J. R. Soc. Interface 16: 20180738. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2018.0738

Abstract

The fundamental problem of friction in the presence of macroscopic adhesion, as in soft bodies, is receiving interest from many experimentalists. Since the first fracture mechanics 'purely brittle' model of Savkoor and Briggs, models have been proposed where the mixed mode toughness is interpreted with phenomenological fitting coefficients introducing weaker coupling between modes than expected by the "purely brittle" model.