TY  - JOUR
AU  - Persson, Bo
TI  - Contact mechanics for layered materials: Rubber film on hard substrate
JO  - The journal of chemical physics
VL  - 162
IS  - 21
SN  - 0021-9606
CY  - Melville, NY
PB  - American Institute of Physics
M1  - FZJ-2025-03176
SP  - 214702
PY  - 2025
AB  - I consider the contact mechanics for a layered material, consisting of an elastically soft film glued to a hard substrate. I calculate the area of real contact for surfaces with fractal-like roughness and for surfaces with roughness in narrow length scale regions. For the fractal-like surfaces, when the product q0d of the film thickness d and the low cut-off wavenumber q0 of the surface roughness power spectrum satisfy q0d < 0.1, the effective modulus becomes very large. This results in large contact stresses, which can induce plastic deformation or wear, in particular during sliding contact. I also calculate the probability distributions of the normal and tangential stresses at the film-substrate interface. If the tangential (shear) stress is too high, the adhesive bond between the film and the substrate will break. I compare the thin-film contact mechanics problem with the Gent solution for a thin elastic sheet confined between two flat solid surfaces, and discuss the origin of the difference in effective elastic modulus.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - 40459356
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:001506905700017
DO  - DOI:10.1063/5.0274655
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1044413
ER  -