The adjustable adhesion strength of multiferroic composite materials via electromagnetic loadings and shape effect of punch.

Tunable and reversible dry adhesion possess great potential in a wide range of applications including transfer printing, climbing robots, wearable devices/electronics, and gripping in pick-and-place operations. Multiferroic composite materials offer new routines and approaches to achieve tunable adhesion due to their multi-field coupling effects. In this paper, the classical Johnson-Kendall-Roberts (JKR) adhesion model is extended to investigate the adhesive contact problem of a multiferroic composite half-space indented by an axisymmetric power-law shaped punch, whose shape index is denoted by n. The JKR- n adhesion models under the action of the power-law shaped punches with four different electromagnetic properties are set up by means of the total energy method. The explicit analytical expressions relating the indentation load and indentation depth to the contact radius are obtained, which can include the existing results in open literature as special cases. The generalized Tabor parameter and the interfacial adhesion strength applicable to multiferroic composite materials are defined. The effects of the shape index and the electromagnetic loadings on adhesion behaviors are revealed. It is found that both of them have prominent influences on the relationships among the indentation load, indentation depth and contact radius, the contact radius and indentation depth at self-equilibrium state, and the critical contact radius and indentation depth at pull-off moment. The pull-off force under the action of the conducting spherical punch subjected to non-zero electromagnetic loadings is dependent on material properties, which is different from the classical JKR result. More importantly, our analysis indicates that the pull-off force and the interfacial adhesion strength can be adjusted via altering the electromagnetic loadings and the shape index of the punch, which provides new approaches to achieve tunable adhesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]