The effect of membrane tension on specific adhesion in steady-state between soft elastic materials

This present study investigates the effect of membrane tension on the molecular-mediated adhesion between two soft elastic materials in a steady state, which simulates the specific adhesion between two cells with cyto-membrane tension taken into consideration. A coupled surface elasticity-bulk elasticity-stochastic model is developed to describe the adhesive contact scenario, which is represented by a Fredholm's equation of the second kind. The numerical results show that the rupture behavior of the two elastic materials transmits from Griffith-like mode to Bell's model when the adhesion size decreases. Unlike the classic case (Wang and Gao, 2010), the pull-off stress exhibits a non-monotonic dependence on the adhesion size ascribed to the presence of membrane tension. In addition, the interfacial stresses become evenly distributed attributed to membrane tension, which again verifies the conclusion that membrane tension facilitates adhesion optimization