When the thicknesses of thin films reduce to microns or even nanometers, surface energy and surface interaction often play a significant role in their deformation behavior and surface morphology. The spinodal surface instability induced by the van der Waals force in a soft elastic thin film perfectly bonded to a rigid substrate is investigated theoretically using the bifurcation theory of elastic structures. The analytical solution is derived for the critical condition of spinodal surface morphology instability by accounting for the competition of the van der Waals interaction energy, elastic strain energy and surface energy. Detailed examinations on the effect of surface energy, thickness and elastic properties of the film show that the characteristic wavelength of the deformation bifurcation mode depends on the film thickness via an exponential relation, with the power index in the range from 0.749 to 1.0. The theoretical solution has a good agreement with relevant experiment results.
Most animals have the ability to adapt, to some extends and in different ways, the variation or disturbance of environment. In our experiments, we forced a silkworm caterpillar to spin two, three or four thin cocoons by taking it out from the cocoon being constructed. The mechanical properties of these cocoons were studied by static tensile tests and dynamic mechanical thermal analysis. Though external disturbances may cause the decrease in the total weight of silk spun by the silkworm, a gradual enhancement was interestingly found in the mechanical properties of these thin cocoons. Scanning electron microscopy observations of the fractured specimens of the cocoons showed that there exist several different energy dissipation mechanisms occurred simultaneously at macro-, meso-, and micro-scales, yielding a superior capacity of cocoons to adsorb the energy of possible attacks from the outside and to protect efficiently its pupa against damage. Through evolution of millions of years, therefore, the silkworm Bombyx mori seems to have gained the ability to adapt external disturbances and to redesign a new cocoon with optimized protective function when its first cocoon has been damaged for some reasons.
In Part 2 of the paper on the Smart-Cut process, the effects of bonding flaws characterized by the size and internal pressure before and after splitting are studied by using fracture mechanics models. It is found that the bonding flaws with large size are prone to cause severe deviation of defect growth, leading to a non-transferred area of thin layer when splitting. In a practical Smart-Cut process where the internal pressure of bonding flaws is very small, large interfacial defects always promote defect growth in the splitting process. Meanwhile, increasing the internal pressure of the bonding flaws decreases the defect growth and its deviation before splitting. The mechanism of relaxation of stiffener constraint is proposed to clarify the effect of bonding flaws. Moreover, the progress of the splitting process is analyzed when bonding flaws are present. After splitting, those bonding flaws with large size and high internal pressure are vulnerable for the blistering of the thin film during high-temperature annealing.
Bin GuHongyuan LiuYiu-Wing MaiXi Qiao FengShouWen Yu
In this study,we theoretically investigate the dynamic indentation for measuring the loss (damping) factor of a linear viscoelastic material from its indentation response.A rigid indenter with arbitrary tip profile is assumed to indent into a viscoelastic substrate with arbitrary shape.We perform a theoretical analysis and identify the conditions under which the loss factor of the material can be determined from the phase angle between the applied harmonic indentation load and the corresponding harmonic displacement,a directly measurable quantity in a dynamic indentation test.To validate the conclusion drawn from our theoretical analysis,a series of numerical experiments are performed,including the spherical indentation of a soft layer with irregular surface morphology bonded to a rigid substrate,a conical indenter with tip defects indenting into a half-spherical particle,and the indentation of porous materials.This study may facilitate the use of the dynamic indentation technique to evaluate the damping properties of linear viscoelastic materials,including some advanced polymers and biological soft tissues.
