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Adhesion and Peeling Instability of an Elastic Rod

Carmel Majidi (Carnegie Mellon University), Oliver O'Reilly (UC Berkeley)

Synthesis, Characterization, and Modeling of Low-Dimensional Nanomaterials

Tue 10:45 - 12:15

Salomon 202

Elastic rod peeling has a central role in a broad range of micro- and nanoscale engineering applications, from stretchable wavy microelectronics to gecko-inspired adhesion with MWCNT arrays. The shape and stability of the elastic rod at static equilibrium represents a critical issue in establishing predictive theories for design and application. We address this by introducing equilibrium and stability criteria for adhesion between an elastic rod and rigid halfspace. This treatment, based on variational methods, produces coupled criteria for adhesion and buckling instabilities by exploiting classical techniques from Legendre and Jacobi. Several examples that arise in a broad range of engineered systems, from microelectronics to biologically-inspired fiber array adhesion, are used to illuminate the stability criteria. The first example illustrates buckling instabilities in adhered rods while the second addresses the shear-induced adhesion of a gecko-inspired microfiber adhesive. The final example concerns the adhesion and peeling instability of a wavy metal electrode with natural intrinsic curvature.