Analytical and experimental study of a circular membrane in adhesive contact with a rigid substrate

The problem that is addressed here is that of a pressurized circular membrane in adhesive contact with a rigid substrate. A closed-form membrane analysis is developed for the JKR, DMT and Maugis regimes, which describes the relationships between adhesion energy, pressure, contact radius and contact force. The JKR–DMT transition is studied for this case of membrane contact by introducing an appropriate dimensionless parameter. Experiments are conducted with smooth and structured acrylate layers on a PET carrier film contacting a glass substrate using an apparatus based on moiré deflectometry to measure the contact radius and slope of these thin transparent films. They demonstrate that this analysis predicts the contact radius well. The adhesion energy extracted from the analysis of the measured pressure-contact radius response is constant during unloading but appears to increase during pressurization.