Detachment of a rigid flat punch from a viscoelastic material

Abstract: We show that the detachment of a flat punch from a viscoelastic substrate has a relatively simple behavior, framed between the Kendall's elastic solution at the relaxed modulus and at the instantaneous modulus, and the cohesive strength limit. We find hardly any dependence of the pull-off force on the details of the loading process, including maximum indentation at preload and loading rate, resulting much simpler than the case of a spherical punch. Pull-off force peaks at the highest speeds of unloading, when energy dissipation is negligible, which seems to be in contrast with what suggested by the theories originated by de Gennes of viscoelastic semi-infinite crack propagation which associated enhanced work of adhesion to dissipation. Further qualitative differences with the dissipation-based model occur to explain the finite size effect.