Adhesion clusters under shared linear loading: a stochastic analysis

T. Erdmann and U. S. Schwarz

Europhys. Lett. 66: 603-609 (2004)

We study the cooperative rupture of multiple adhesion bonds under
shared linear loading. Simulations of the appropriate Master equation
are compared with numerical integration of a rate equation for the
mean number of bonds and its scaling analysis. In general,
force-accelerated rupture is rather abrupt. For small clusters and
slow loading, large fluctuations occur regarding the timepoint of
final rupture, but not the typical shape of the rupture
trajectory. For vanishing rebinding, our numerical results confirm
three scaling regimes predicted before for cluster lifetime as a
function of loading rate. For finite rebinding, the intermediate
loading regime becomes irrelevant, and a sequence of two new scaling
laws can be identified in the slow loading regime.