TY - JOUR AU - Persson, Bo AU - Scaraggi, M. TI - Theory of adhesion: Role of surface roughness JO - The journal of chemical physics VL - 141 IS - 12 SN - 1089-7690 CY - Melville, NY PB - American Institute of Physics M1 - FZJ-2015-04088 SP - 124701 PY - 2014 AB - We discuss how surface roughness influences the adhesion between elastic solids. We introduce a Tabor number which depends on the length scale or magnification, and which gives information about the nature of the adhesion at different length scales. We consider two limiting cases relevant for (a) elastically hard solids with weak (or long ranged) adhesive interaction (DMT-limit) and (b) elastically soft solids with strong (or short ranged) adhesive interaction (JKR-limit). For the former cases we study the nature of the adhesion using different adhesive force laws (F ∼ u −n , n = 1.5–4, where u is the wall-wall separation). In general, adhesion may switch from DMT-like at short length scales to JKR-like at large (macroscopic) length scale. We compare the theory predictions to results of exact numerical simulations and find good agreement between theory and simulation results. LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 UR - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000342844100055 C6 - pmid:25273455 DO - DOI:10.1063/1.4895789 UR - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/201794 ER -