Adhesion of an elastic plate to a sphere

Stationary principles and the von Karman plate theory are used to study the adhesion of thin elastic plates to a rigid sphere. Contact requires both flexural and membrane strains that can lead to partial or complete delamination. Interestingly, whereas a large area plate might spontaneously delaminate from the sphere, dividing this plate into many smaller plates with equivalent thickness eliminates membrane strains and may allow complete contact. The theoretical predictions are compared to experimental results for low density polyethylene on a smooth glass sphere. The peel strength is estimated with a modified Kendall peel equation.