Calculation of Electrostatic/Magnetic Adhesion Force Between Adjacent Objects Considering Thin Gap Effect

This paper presents a new approach to evaluating the electrostatic/magnetic adhesion force between two adjacent objects separated by a thin gap. In this approach, instead of generating mesh for the gap, a contact boundary is introduced in the finite element modeling to obtain a reasonable field distribution; then the field in the gap is approximated based on the continuity condition at their interface, so that the adhesion force can be properly calculated. Moreover, a simple equivalent circuit model is introduced to explain how the thin gap influences the adhesion force significantly. Numerical experiments are given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method and the significance of the thin gap.