A STUDY ON THE ADHESIVE PROPERTIES OF MATERIALS FOR BIOMIMETIC GECKO'S FEET

摘要

Many animals have a magic ability to move or hold on the ceilings and walls because the design of their adhesive pads. Experiments were carried out to study the effects of material properties (elastic modulus EM and chemical components CC), contact geometry ( surface roughness, connecting stiffness ) . The adhesion for the lowest EM samples is highest (15 kPa) and the surface roughness has hardly effects on adhesion and the adhesion decreases to only 1.5kPa for the highest EM samples; The adhesive forces were heavily influenced by CC of polyurethane; Surface roughness heavily influences the adhesion and when the roughness higher than R_a 0.3 μm, the adhesion obtained are the same; The adhesion does not change with the normal forces by using a sphere contact with flat PU samples. But when the contact surfaces are flat to flat, the adhesion increases with normal loads at first and than turns to slightly raise. The adhesion is the same for the contact angles from 1 to 3 degree when the samples were softly connected. But when they hard connected the adhesion decreases with increase of contact angle. The results are important data for bionic of the foot.