ADHESIVE CONTACT AND KINETICS OF ADHERENCE BETWEEN A RIGID CYLINDER AND A SOFT ELASTOMERIC SOLID

The equilibrium contact of a rigid cylinder applied against the flat a nd smooth surface of a soft elastomer sample (natural rubber) is exami ned and a method is proposed for evaluating both the Young's modulus E of the rubber-like material tested and the Dupre' energy of adhesion w using a presentation of results similar to that recently described b y Chaudhury et al. from the previous work of Barquins. New results on the kinetics of adherence at imposed normal load are presented. They c onsist of a study of variations of the strain energy release rate G an d of the associate dissipation function Phi = (G-w)/w as a function of the crack propagation speed V at the interface between the rigid cyli nder and the elastic solid. As expected, a master curve Phi(V) is foun d, confirming the variation of Phi as the 0.55 power function of V, as recently established in rolling and rebound experiments by Barquins a nd Charmet with the same rubber-like material. (C) Academie des Scienc es/Elsevier, Paris.