Interfacial adhesion and friction are significant factors in determining the reliability of small-scale mechanical devices such as with MEMS and the computer head/disk interface (HDI). As the interface spacing becomes smaller, operational failure via stiction has become a growing concern in these systems. Fundamentally, interface failure is related to mechanical instability of the interface caused by capillary effects. When liquid is present in a small-scale interface, large concave meniscus curvatures often develop at the liquid-vapor interface, leading to negative pressures in the liquid film and large tensile forces on the surfaces. When the elastic restoring force cannot balance the capillary force, the interface will lose its stability and collapse into intimate contact (jump-on). In addition, when the elastic bodies are then pulled away from contact, separation may occur suddenly and is related to another form of instability (jump-off). The jump-on and jump-off behaviors determine the strength of interfacial adhesion. In this study, the interaction between two elastic bodies coupled via a small liquid bridge was investigated. Geometries of two half-spaces and two sphere contact were considered. Stable equilibrium configurations were determined, and the mechanical stability of the interface was examined. Jump-on and jump-off conditions were given out. Then the theory was applied to study the approach and detachment processes of two elastic spheres in the presence of a liquid bridge. Critical values of the control variables at jump-on and jump-off were found. The pull-off force was calculated as a measure of interfacial adhesion. The results provide insight on some experimental data in the literature.

Most of the surfaces have roughness down to atomic scales. When two surfaces come into contact, the nature of the roughness determines the properties like friction and wear. Analysis of the rough surface contacts is always complicated by the interaction between the material size effects and the micro-geometry. Contact mechanics could be simplified by decoupling these two effects by magnifying the scale of roughness profile. Also, tailoring the roughness at different scale could show a way to control the friction and wear through surface micro-structure modifications. In this work, the mechanics of contact between a rigid, hard sphere and a surface with a well defined roughness profile is studied through experiments and finite element simulation. The well defined roughness profile is made up of a regular array of pyramidal asperities. This choice of this geometry was mainly dictated by the fabrication processes. The specimens were made out of an aluminium alloy (6351-T6) such that there could be a direct application of the results in controlling the tribological properties during aluminium forming. Experiments on the pyramidal aluminium surface is carried out in a 250 kN Universal Testing Machine (INSTRON 8502 system) using a depth sensing indentation setup. A strain gauge based load cell is used to measure the force of the indentation and a LVDT (Linear Variable Differential Transformer) is used to measure the penetration depth. The load and the displacement were continuously recorded using a data acquisition system. A 3-D finite element framework for studying the elastic-plastic contact of the rough surfaces has been developed with the commercial package (ABAQUS). Systematic studies of indentation were carried out in order to validate the simulations with the experimental observations. The simulation of indentation of flat surface is carried out using the implicit/standard (Backward Euler) procedure, whereas, the explicit finite element method (Forward Euler) is used for simulating rough surface indentation. It is found that the load versus displacement curves obtained from experiments match well with the finite element results (except for the error involved in determining the initial contact point). At indentation depths higher than a value that is determined mainly by the asperity height, the load-displacement characteristics are similar to that pertaining to indentation of a flat, smooth surface. From the finite element results, it is found that at this point, the elastic-plastic boundary is more or less hemispherical as in the case of smooth surface indentation. For certain geometries, it is found that there could exist an elastic island in the sub-surface surrounded by plastically deformed material. This could have interesting applications.