Effect of interfacial slippage in peel test: Theoretical model

Peel test is an efficient method to assess the performance and characteristics of materials such as adhesives and adhesive tapes. Recent experiments evidenced that the measured adhesive strength is closely related to the shear-induced interfacial slippage near the delamination front due to the concomitant Poisson contraction effect of the adhesive. Based on the experimental observations, a theoretical model is presented in this paper to examine the effect of the shear-induced interfacial slippage in the peel test. The influence of the interfacial slippage, represented by the shear displacement in the cohesive zone, on the fracture energy of decohesive zone is analyzed. An implicit expansion method with a Gauss-Chebyshev quadrature scheme is used to derive the solution. It is found that the length of the slippage zone and the receding contact angle of adhesives are the two most significant contributors to the total fracture energy of the decohesive zone. These results demonstrate that the mechanism of interfacial slippage plays a significant role in the adhesion and peeling behaviors of adhesives