Adhesion
Using the Adhesion subnode, you can add adhesion properties to a contact pair. This functionality requires that the contact is modeled using the penalty method, and that no offset is used in the penalty stiffness function.
The selection of the Adhesion node is the same as that of its parent Contact node. There can only be one Adhesion node under a specific Contact node. If Adhesion and Friction are present under the same Contact node, the friction settings will be ignored at the locations where the adhesive activation criterion is fulfilled.
The Adhesion subnode is only available with some COMSOL products (see https://www.comsol.com/products/specifications/).
Coordinate System Selection
The adhesive stresses are defined as boundary tractions with respect to the selected coordinate system. The selection is limited to boundary systems. Make sure that the tangents of the selected boundary system are well defined on all destination boundaries.
Adhesive Activation
Select an Activation criterion to describe the onset of the adhesion between the source and destination boundaries.
When the criterion is Pressure, enter the minimum contact pressure p0, at which adhesion is initiated.
When the criterion is Gap, enter the distance between the source and destination boundaries δ0, at which adhesion is initiated. A negative value indicates that there must be a certain overclosure before adhesion is activated.
When the criterion is User Defined, enter a Boolean expression such that when it evaluates to true, adhesion is activated.
When the criterion is Always active, the source and destination boundaries are always in adhesive contact, unless broken by decohesion.
Adhesive Stiffness
In this section, you specify the stiffness of the adhesive layer in the normal and tangential directions. The adhesive normal stiffness is used in tension only; in compression the contact pressure penalty factor is always used.
Select how to specify the Adhesive stiffness of the adhesive layer — From contact penalty factor, User defined, or Use material data. The default is to use From contact penalty factor, in which case the normal stiffness is the same as the Contact pressure penalty factor specified in the settings of the parent Contact node.
To define the tangential stiffness, select Shear stiffness defined using to be either Normal to shear ratio or Adhesive Poisson’s ratio. For Normal to shear ratio, enter the ratio between the shear stiffness and the normal stiffness nτ. For Adhesive Poisson’s ratio, enter Poisson’s ratio for the adhesive layer, ν, explicitly.
When Adhesive stiffness is set to User defined, enter each component of the stiffness vector k individually.
When Adhesive stiffness is set to Use material data, the stiffness vector k is computed from material data and layer thickness. From the Specify list, select a pair of elastic properties — Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio, Young’s modulus and shear modulus, or Bulk modulus and shear modulus. Each of these pairs define the elastic properties and it is possible to convert from one set of properties to another according to Table 4-10. For the chosen properties, select from the applicable list to use the value From material or enter a User defined value or expression. In order to use From material, you must have assigned a material to the selected boundaries.
Enter a Thickness, ds, to specify the physical thickness of the adhesive layer.
Including Adhesion and Decohesion, and The Adhesion Node in the Structural Mechanics Modeling chapter.
Adhesion in the Structural Mechanics Theory chapter.
Location in User Interface
Context Menus
Ribbon
Physics tab with Contact selected in the Model Builder tree: