To optimal elasticity of adhesives mimicking gecko foot-hairs

Artificial structure of a plate with elastic fibers interacting with rough fractal surface by Van der Waals forces is simulated numerically to find an optimal relation between the system parameters. The force balance equations are solved numerically for different values of elastic constant and variable surface roughness. An optimal elasticity is found to provide maximum cohesion force between the plate and surface. It is shown that high flexibility of the fibers is not always good to efficiency of the system, artificial adhesives must be made from stiff enough polymers. If the ellasticity is close to an optimum, the force is almost constant at a wide interval of the surface roughness. It is desirable to make system adaptive to wide spectrum of applications.