An adhesion model for plane-strain shearable hyperelastic beams

In the present work, a new adhesion model is proposed to analyze the peeling behavior of plane-strain shearable hyperelastic beams from a rigid flat substrate. The large strain effect, the bending effect and the transverse shear effect are all taken into account in the model. The variational method is utilized to derive the equilibrium equations and associated boundary conditions, including one that physically means the local peeling (fracture) criterion. A first integral is found for such kind of beams and is also used to derive an equivalent global peeling criterion. It is proven that the critical peeling force for the steady peeling of such shearable hyperelastic beams is the same as that for hyperelastic thin films with membrane approximation. The effect of pre-stretch on the peeling behavior is further considered. The developed model will contribute to the modeling and understanding of the adhesion and fracture behaviors of soft structures and biomimetic adhesives.