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Insect adhesion on rough surfaces: analysis of adhesive contact of smooth and hairy pads on transparent microstructured substrates
Insect climbing footpads are able to adhere to rough surfaces, but the details of this capability are still unclear. To overcome experimental limitations of randomly rough, opaque surfaces, we fabricated transparent test substrates containing square arrays of 1.4 µm diameter pillars, with variable h...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4233698/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24990289 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.0499 |
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author | Zhou, Yanmin Robinson, Adam Steiner, Ullrich Federle, Walter |
author_facet | Zhou, Yanmin Robinson, Adam Steiner, Ullrich Federle, Walter |
author_sort | Zhou, Yanmin |
collection | PubMed |
description | Insect climbing footpads are able to adhere to rough surfaces, but the details of this capability are still unclear. To overcome experimental limitations of randomly rough, opaque surfaces, we fabricated transparent test substrates containing square arrays of 1.4 µm diameter pillars, with variable height (0.5 and 1.4 µm) and spacing (from 3 to 22 µm). Smooth pads of cockroaches (Nauphoeta cinerea) made partial contact (limited to the tops of the structures) for the two densest arrays of tall pillars, but full contact (touching the substrate in between pillars) for larger spacings. The transition from partial to full contact was accompanied by a sharp increase in shear forces. Tests on hairy pads of dock beetles (Gastrophysa viridula) showed that setae adhered between pillars for larger spacings, but pads were equally unable to make full contact on the densest arrays. The beetles' shear forces similarly decreased for denser arrays, but also for short pillars and with a more gradual transition. These observations can be explained by simple contact models derived for soft uniform materials (smooth pads) or thin flat plates (hairy-pad spatulae). Our results show that microstructured substrates are powerful tools to reveal adaptations of natural adhesives for rough surfaces. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4233698 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42336982014-11-21 Insect adhesion on rough surfaces: analysis of adhesive contact of smooth and hairy pads on transparent microstructured substrates Zhou, Yanmin Robinson, Adam Steiner, Ullrich Federle, Walter J R Soc Interface Research Articles Insect climbing footpads are able to adhere to rough surfaces, but the details of this capability are still unclear. To overcome experimental limitations of randomly rough, opaque surfaces, we fabricated transparent test substrates containing square arrays of 1.4 µm diameter pillars, with variable height (0.5 and 1.4 µm) and spacing (from 3 to 22 µm). Smooth pads of cockroaches (Nauphoeta cinerea) made partial contact (limited to the tops of the structures) for the two densest arrays of tall pillars, but full contact (touching the substrate in between pillars) for larger spacings. The transition from partial to full contact was accompanied by a sharp increase in shear forces. Tests on hairy pads of dock beetles (Gastrophysa viridula) showed that setae adhered between pillars for larger spacings, but pads were equally unable to make full contact on the densest arrays. The beetles' shear forces similarly decreased for denser arrays, but also for short pillars and with a more gradual transition. These observations can be explained by simple contact models derived for soft uniform materials (smooth pads) or thin flat plates (hairy-pad spatulae). Our results show that microstructured substrates are powerful tools to reveal adaptations of natural adhesives for rough surfaces. The Royal Society 2014-09-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4233698/ /pubmed/24990289 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.0499 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ © 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Articles Zhou, Yanmin Robinson, Adam Steiner, Ullrich Federle, Walter Insect adhesion on rough surfaces: analysis of adhesive contact of smooth and hairy pads on transparent microstructured substrates |
title | Insect adhesion on rough surfaces: analysis of adhesive contact of smooth and hairy pads on transparent microstructured substrates |
title_full | Insect adhesion on rough surfaces: analysis of adhesive contact of smooth and hairy pads on transparent microstructured substrates |
title_fullStr | Insect adhesion on rough surfaces: analysis of adhesive contact of smooth and hairy pads on transparent microstructured substrates |
title_full_unstemmed | Insect adhesion on rough surfaces: analysis of adhesive contact of smooth and hairy pads on transparent microstructured substrates |
title_short | Insect adhesion on rough surfaces: analysis of adhesive contact of smooth and hairy pads on transparent microstructured substrates |
title_sort | insect adhesion on rough surfaces: analysis of adhesive contact of smooth and hairy pads on transparent microstructured substrates |
topic | Research Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4233698/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24990289 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.0499 |
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