Cavitation in adhesives

The bubbles that usually appear in the bulk of an adhesive film during separation allow for a significant deformation of the adhesive material and are therefore an essential ingredient for a high dissipation. Recent observations have shown that they appear in the early stages of separation. The present model describes the early deformations induced in the film by the bubbles, and predicts how many will appear, depending on the separation velocity and on the number of weak points in the film. The trends we obtain are in agreement with observations.