The Effect of Work of Adhesion on Contact of a Pressurized Blister With a Flat Surface

The ability to accurately measure surface and interfacial energies affects our understanding of friction, wear, bonding and adhesion. Although there are accurate ways to measure the surface energies of liquids, the surface energies of solids have been harder to characterize. In order to broaden the knowledge of adhesion of solids, a modification to the constrained blister test is proposed. Most of the previous work on constrained blisters has examined the debonding of the blister from the surface underneath as pressure is applied from below. In this thesis, the contact of the constrained blister with the flat surface above it is considered. In addition, the blister is given specified boundary conditions at its outer radius, which has a fixed value.

Three models of the blister behavior are considered: linear plate, nonlinear plate, and membrane. The contact of the blister with the substrate above it is modeled with no adhesion, the JKR-type of adhesion, and the DMT-type of adhesion. Several substrate heights are considered, along with several values for the work of adhesion in the JKR analysis, and several combinations of force magnitude and gap size in the DMT analysis. The effect of adhesion on the contact radius is investigated. Sometimes the contact radius changes discontinuously as the pressure is increased or decreased. Results from the three models of blister behavior and the different models of adhesion are compared.