Adhesion in elastic-plastic spherical microcontact
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Updated: Aug 10, 2026

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Published on: July 3, 2018
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel.
Abstract:
An elastic-plastic adhesion model for a metallic deformable sphere pressed by a rigid flat is presented. Analytical dimensionless expressions for the local separation outside the contact area and for the adhesion force are provided covering a large range of interference values from a point contact to a fully plastic contact. Two main dimensionless parameters of the problem are identified and their effect on the adhesion is investigated. The significance of the adhesion in the elastic-plastic contact force balance is discussed and the regimes where adhesion is important or negligible are pointed out. A comparison of the present results with a previously published approximate elastic-plastic model shows substantial differences in the local separation and in the adhesion force.
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