Adhesive contact between a rigid nanofiber and an incompressible elastic substrate

Adhesive contact between a rigid nanofiber and an incompressible elastic substrate is studied. A new expression of adhesive pressure, which accounts for the exact geometry of the fiber and the deformation of the substrate, is derived from the elementary Lennard–Jones (L–J) potential. This enables that the phenomenon of adhesion saturation for small fiber radii is predicted in a natural way. Numerical computations also show the validity of the well-known Derjaguin’s approximation in a quite broad region down to fiber radii of a few nanometers. These results are expected useful for such applications as nanoindentation, nanopunch, and bio-inspired adhesion.