Bending to Kinetic Energy Transfer in Adhesive Peel Front Microinstability.

Area of Science:

• Soft Matter Physics
• Adhesion Science
• Materials Science

Background:

• Tape peeling is a common phenomenon involving complex detachment dynamics.
• Microscopic instabilities at the detachment front can significantly influence the peeling process.
• Understanding these instabilities is crucial for controlling adhesion and material failure.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally investigate the dynamics of detachment front instabilities during adhesive tape peeling.
• To establish a theoretical model explaining the observed scaling laws of these microinstabilities.
• To elucidate the energy conversion mechanisms driving the instability.

Main Methods:

• Extensive experimental study of tape peeling at microscopic scales.
• Analysis of the relationship between instability amplitude and period.
• Development of a theoretical model based on a local energy budget of the detachment process.

Main Results:

• The amplitude of the detachment front instability scales with its period as A_{mss}∝T_{mss}^{1/3}.
• The prefactor of this scaling law shows slight dependence on the peel angle (θ).
• The instability's characteristics systematically increase with the bending modulus (B) of the tape backing.

Conclusions:

• A theoretical model successfully describes the experimental scaling law by considering energy conversion.
• Elastic bending energy stored in the tape is converted into kinetic energy during instability.
• This provides a quantitative explanation for the observed detachment front dynamics instability.