Surface roughness of peeled adhesive tape: A mystery?

¹ IFF, FZ-Jülich - D-52425 Jülich, Germany, EU
² Department of Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Zoological Institute at the University of Kiel Am Botanischen Garten 1-9, D-24098 Kiel, Germany, EU
³ Department of Physics, University of Basel - Klingelbergstr. 82, 4056 Basel, Switzerland

^a b.persson@fz-juelich.de

Received: 8 October 2010
Accepted: 4 November 2010

Abstract

We study the surface roughness of adhesive tape peeled in stick-slip. We find two regions: a smooth surface region associated with fast crack propagation and a rough surface region associated with slow crack propagation. In both regions the surfaces may be self-affine fractal-like with the fractal dimension D_f≈2.3. This fractal dimension is typical for surfaces produced by crack propagation, but unexpected in the present case.