Adhesion of smoothly flat-ended wedges

In our previous work a closed-form solution was given for the two-dimension ally adhesive contact of a flat-ended wedge with an elastic half-space. How ever, the stresses are singular both at the edges of contact and at the sha rp corners. This paper considers the Dugdale model in fracture mechanics, a nd smoothness of the wedge profile, which suppresses these stress singulari ties. The approach avoids the self-consistent calculations for the real mat erial potential. Complete analyses are given for the contact pressure distr ibution, the load-contact-area relationship and the variation of the air ga p with the load. The results are compared with those in molecular dynamics simulations, which show more refined features of surface adhesion mechanism s. This work on the truncated wedge geometry is supplemental to the work of Maugis on the adhesion of spheres and the work of Johnson on the adhesion of cylinders.