Two comments on adhesion

TL;DR

This paper investigates the adhesion paradox, showing that surface roughness, especially long-wavelength roughness, prevents adhesion in most cases, supported by experiments with human fingers and glass.

Contribution

It provides experimental and theoretical evidence that long-wavelength surface roughness suppresses adhesion, explaining the adhesion paradox in practical contact scenarios.

Findings

Dry finger-glass contact shows no macroscopic adhesion.

Increase in shear force reduces contact area due to non-adhesive mechanics.

Surface roughness at long wavelengths kills adhesion in most cases.

Abstract

The adhesion paradox refers to the observation that for most solid objects no adhesion can be detected when they are separated from a state of molecular contact. The adhesion paradox results from surface roughness, and we present experimental and theoretical results which shows that adhesion in most cases is "killed" by the longest wavelength roughness. Adhesion experiments between a human finger and a clean glass plate were carried out, and for a dry finger, no macroscopic adhesion occurred. We suggest that the observed decrease in the contact area with increasing shear force results from non-adhesive finger-glass contact mechanics, involving large deformations of a complex layered material.