On the peeling of elastic tapes from viscoelastic substrates: Designing materials for ultratough peeling

The present paper deals with the peeling of an elastic thin tape from a viscoelastic substrate. A previous investigation of the authors has disclosed several physical aspects of such phenomenon by focusing the attention on an ideal viscoelastic substrate with one-single relaxation time. However, for real viscoelastic solids, the spectrum of relaxation times may cover more than 10 decades. For this reason, it is of interest investigating the influence of the number of relaxation times on the peeling mechanism. More specifically, it is possible to enlarge the frequency range where the material shows significant damping and energy dissipation by increasing such number. This may help in properly designing viscoelastic materials with ultra-tough adhesion properties. As a practical example, a widespread viscoelastic material is considered, the PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate), which presents high damping at low-frequencies, thus making tough the peeling behavior at small velocities.