Modelling adhesion and friction in contact problems

The main objective of this thesis is to obtain a better understanding of adhesive contacts and their frictional behaviour. Both natural and man-made surfaces are rough over a wide range of length scales. Tribological studies of rough surfaces need to account for the interactions between these asperities. In this work a sim- ple atomistically...

Modeling adhesive contacts under mixed-mode loading

Experiments show that when an adhesive contact is subjected to a tangential load the contact area reduces, symmetrically or asymmetrically, depending on whether the contact is under tension or compression. What happens after the onset of sliding is more difficult to be assessed because conducting experiments is rather complicated, especially...