Investigating the effect of Shore hardness on the adhesion strength of a gecko robot dry adhesive

The hardness of elastomers has been known to be directly related to the Young modulus of elastomers, whereas the Young modulus is generally inversely proportional to the adhesion strength of an adhesive pad. In this research, the Taguchi Design of Experiments was applied to investigate the effect of mixing time, degassing, curing, and post curing temperature on the Shore hardness of Vytaflex 10 pads. The adhesive pressure of the adhesive pads was then measured. The results show that there is an inverse relationship between Shore hardness and adhesive pressure, although the corelation is weak.