The effect of surface roughness on the adhesion of elastic solids

This paper describes a study of the adhesion between elastic solids and the effect of roughness in reducing the adhesion. The experiments were carried out between optically smooth rubber spheres and a hard smooth flat surface of Perspex which could be roughened to various degrees. The radius of the rubber spheres was varied by a factor of 8, their elastic modulus by a factor of 10, while the centre line average (c.l.a.)of the roughened Perspex surface was varied from 0.12 to 1.5 μm. The results show that c.l.a. roughnesses which are small compared with the overall deformation occurring at the region of the rubber-Perspex contact can produce an extremely large reduction in adhesion. The effect is more marked for rubbers of higher modulus. On the other hand the curvature of the sphere (over the range examined) has little influence. For this reason and because the analytical problem of a sphere on a rough flat is extremely complicated a theoretical analysis has been developed for the simpler case of a smooth flat in contact with a rough flat surface. As in Greenwood & Williamson (1966) the rough surface is modelled by asperities all of the same radius of curvature and with heights following a Gaussian distribution of standard deviation σ. The overall contact force is obtained by applying the contact theory of Johnson, Kendall & Roberts (1971) to each individual asperity. The theory predicts that the adhesion expressed as a fraction of the maximum value depends upon a single parameter, 1/Δe,which is the ratio between a and the elastic displacement δC that the tip of an asperity can sustain before it pulls off from the other surface. The analysis shows that the adhesion parameter may also be regarded as representing the statistical average of a competition between the compressive forces exerted by the higher asperities trying to prize the surfaces apart and the adhesive forces between the lower asperities trying to hold the surfaces together. Although the theory is derived for two nominally plane surfaces it is found to fit the experimental results for a sphere on a flat reasonably well.