Adhesive Strength of Contacts of Rough Spheres

The adhesive contact between a parabolic indenter with superimposed roughness and an elastic half space is studied in the JKR-limit (infinitely small range of action of adhesive forces) using the boundary element method with mesh-dependent detachment criterion suggested in 2015. Three types of superimposed roughness are considered: one- and two-dimensional waviness and randomly rough roughness. It is shown that in the case of regular waviness, the character of adhesion is governed by the Johnson adhesion parameter. For our randomly rough surfaces a new adhesion parameter has been identified numerically, which uniquely determines the adhesive strength of the contact.