# Modeling the adhesive contact of rough soft media with an advanced asperity model

## TL;DR

This paper extends an asperity contact model to include adhesion effects, accurately capturing contact mechanics of soft rough media with complex geometries through improved theoretical and numerical methods.

## Contribution

The paper introduces an enhanced asperity model incorporating adhesion via JKR theory, accounting for contact instabilities and asperity interactions in soft media.

## Key findings

- Model accurately predicts contact stress distributions.
- Results agree with numerical simulations and experiments.
- Captures effects of adhesion and asperity coalescence.

## Abstract

Adhesive interactions strongly characterize the contact mechanics of soft bodies as they lead to large elastic deformations and contact instabilities. In this paper, we extend the Interacting and Coalescing Hertzian Asperities (ICHA) model to the case of adhesive contact. Adhesion is modeled according to an improved version of the Johnson, Kendall & Roberts (JKR) theory, in which jump-in contact instabilities are conveniently considered as well as the lateral interaction of the asperities and the coalescence of merging contact spots. Results obtained on complex fractal geometries with several length scales are accurate as demonstrated by the comparison with fully numerical simulations and experimental investigations taken from the literature. Also, the model quite well captures the distributions of the contact stresses, gaps, and contact spots.