Investigation on biomimetic wet adhesive pads with variable cross-section surface microstructures

AbstractMechanism of biomimetic adhesive pad and animal's pad are generally alike in stability and be independent of environment, including wet adhesion and seta adhesion. Biomimetic wet adhesive pad has an advantage over creeping on wet surface because of perfect ability of copy surface shape. The processes of adsorbing wall and peeling wall rapidly carry through alternate, so the ability of getting over the wet adhesion force in peeling and the ability of producing the force are equal of importance. This study focus on the problem of peeling from the wall of biomimetic wet adhesive pads, and a new adhesive pad with variable cross-sections microstructures is proposed. The experiments of adhesion force and peeling force of the proposed pads have been investigated, the result shows the validity of the variable cross-section surface microstructures.