• Tribology and Lubricants
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.129-135
• /
• 2010

Geckos have a unique ability to cling to ceilings and walls utilizing dry adhesion. Their foot pads are covered by a large number of small hairs (setae) that contain many branches per seta with a lower level of spatulae. Their fibrillar structure is the primary source of high adhesion. In this study, we construct the adhesion design database for biomimetic adhesive system. A simple idealized fibrillar structure consisting of single array of beams is modeled. The fibers are assumed as oriented cylindrical cantilever beams with spherical tip. We consider three necessary conditions; buckling, fracture and sticking of fiber structure, which constrain the allowed geometry. The adhesion analysis is performed for the attachment system in contact with rough surfaces with different s values for different main design variables-fiber radius, aspect ratio and material elastic modulus and so on. The developed adhesion design databases are useful for understanding biological systems and for guiding of fabrication of the biomimetic attachment system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2010.11a
• /
• pp.771-772
• /
• 2010

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2011.02a
• /
• pp.432-432
• /
• 2011

Dry adhesion caused by Nanoscale contact comes up to important scientific issue. Herein, we introduce bendable nanohairy locking fastener system with high shear strength and mechanically flexible backing. The polymeric patches like velcro are composed of an array of straight nanohairs with 100 nm diameter and $1{\mu}m$ height. To fabricate high aspect vertical nanohairs, we used UV molding method with appropriately flexible and rigid polyurethane acrylate material on PET substrate. Two identical nanohairy patches are easily merged and locked each other induced by van der Waals force. Because nanohairs can be arrayed with high density ${\sim}4{\times}10^8/cm^2$, we can obtain high shear adhesion force on flat surface (~22 N/$cm^2$). Furthermore, we can obtian nanohairy locking system with maximum shear adhesion ~48 N/$cm^2$ of curved surface due to flexibility of PET substrate. We confirm the tendency that shear adhesion force increases, as radius of curvature increases.