Peeling adhesive tape: A case study for understanding the effective properties of heterogenous materials

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Professor Kaushik Bhattacharya, California Institute of Technology
• Friday 15 March 2013, 14:00-15:00
• Cambridge University Engineering Department, LR4.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ms Helen Gardner.

While there is a good understanding of the overall behavior of heterogeneous materials concerning properties that are characterized by a variational principle, much remains unknown concerning those properties that are characterized by evolutionary processes. This talk will discuss the simple process of peeling an adhesive tape from a rigid substrate as a case study to demonstrate the complexities that can arise in this situation. Specifically, we show that that one can dramatically enhance the overall adhesive strength by patterning the elastic modulus of the tape, and induce asymmetry where the force needed to peel the membrane depends not only on the direction but also the sense of the peel. Remarkably, these modifications in peeling strength come from variations in the energy associated with bending of the tape near the peeling front which is negligible compared to the overall energy in the system. This illustrates that in evolutionary processes, perturbations with apparently negligible energy can have an anomalously large macroscopic effect. The talk will conclude with broader lessons for other phenomena including fracture, dislocations, phase boundaries and wetting fronts.

This is based on joint work with S. Xia, L. Ponson and G. Ravichandran

This talk is part of the Engineering - Mechanics and Materials Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cambridge Energy Seminars
• Cambridge University Engineering Department Talks
• Cambridge University Engineering Department, LR4
• Cambridge talks
• Centre for Smart Infrastructure & Construction
• Computational Continuum Mechanics Group Seminars
• Engineering - Mechanics and Materials Seminar Series
• Engineering - Mechanics, Materials and Design (Div C) - talks and events
• Featured lists
• Interested Talks
• Lennard-Jones Centre external
• NanoDTC Energy Materials Talks
• School of Technology
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• bld31
• history

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.