At the small scale, Van der Waals forces become non-negligible and adhesion need to be accounted for in simulations. One axis of our research consists in going from non-adhesive normal contact to adhesive normal contact. We have the capacity to study several adhesive pontetials and their consequences on the contact area and the distribution of contact clusters for different roughnesses.
Contact clusters with increasing normal load. Black corresponds to positive elastic pressure, white corresponds to negative elastic pressure and grey corresponds to zero pressure. We observe that adhesion takes place around contact patchs and connects them.