Stress Distribution during Peeling of Adhesive Tapes

The pattern of stress distribution observed during the peeling of pressure sensitive tapes is not adequately described by existing theoretical analyses of peel, which make over-simplifying assumptions. In particular, the consequence of filamentation or “legging” in the peeling zone is neglected by the theories. In the present work an attempt is made to assess the effect of filamentation by analysis of the peeling profile obtained by photography. The deflection of the backing film from its unrestricted “bent beam” configuration is interpreted in terms of a “filamentation force”. The stress distributions obtained show that filamentation makes an important contribution to the peel force and show good correlation with the results obtained from related systems by a different experimental method.