# Bending to kinetic energy transfer in adhesive peel front micro-instability

## TL;DR

This paper investigates a microscopic instability during adhesive tape peeling, revealing how bending energy converts into kinetic energy and establishing a scaling law relating amplitude and period of the instability.

## Contribution

It provides the first detailed experimental and theoretical analysis of micro-instability dynamics in adhesive peel fronts, linking bending energy to kinetic energy transfer.

## Key findings

- Amplitude scales with period as A_mss ∝ T_mss^{1/3}
- Bending modulus influences instability characteristics
- Elastic bending energy converts into kinetic energy during peeling

## Abstract

We report an extensive experimental study of a detachment front dynamics instability, appearing at microscopic scales during the peeling of adhesive tapes. The amplitude of this instability scales with its period as $A_{\text{mss}} \propto T_{\text{mss}}^{1/3}$, with a pre-factor evolving slightly with the peel angle $\theta$, and increasing systematically with the bending modulus $B$ of the tape backing. Establishing a local energy budget of the detachment process during one period of this micro-instability, our theoretical model shows that the elastic bending energy stored in the portion of tape to be peeled is converted into kinetic energy, providing a quantitative description of the experimental scaling law.