PDMS-Glass Interface Adhesion Energy Determined Via Comprehensive Solutions for Thin Film Bulge/Blister Tests

This paper provides comprehensive relationships for pressure, deflection, energy release rate, and phase angle for bulge testing, which are valid for all combinations of the testing length-scales (film thickness, debond size, and bulge height) and materials. These solutions can be used to design experiments that vary relative contributions of opening and sliding displacements at the crack tip by modulating the film thickness, debond size, and bulge volume. Their closed-form nature greatly facilitates property extraction via regression, e.g., modulus from experimental pressure/deflection data or interface toughness from debond size/injected volume data. This is illustrated using experiments to quantify the interfacial adhesion energy between an initially dry polydimethylsiloxane-glass interface via bulge testing under controlled volume injection. The results indicate that the mode-mixity has no effect on the energy required for debonding, which suggests that wetting of the crack faces behind the debonding front eliminates friction.