Quantifying the Relationship Between Peel and Rheology for Pressure Sensitive Adhesives

An attempt is made in this work to model quantitatively the peel force vs. rate behavior of a pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) tape. The approach follows suggestions of previous authors in modeling the deformation of the PSA as uniaxial extension of individual strands. A debonding failure criterion based on stored elastic energy density is used. In this work, experimental measurements of dynamic mechanical master curves are used to provide the mechanical properties of the PSA in the model. The predictions are compared with experimental peel force vs. rate master curves on tapes made from those same adhesives. The only adjustable parameter for the fitting is the quantity related to the debonding criterion. In this set of natural-rubber-based PSAs, the general shape of the peel master curve and the changes in peel behavior associated with tackifier loading and rubber molecular weight are well explained by the model. The effect of changes in substrate chemistry are not well explained.