PSI - Issue 79

America Califano et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 79 (2026) 306–312

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Fig. 3. Stress on the innermost fibril (blue curve), the outermost fibril (yellow curve) and the mid fibril (red curve)

Fig. 4. Contact hysteresis loop, namely the total force of contact vs. the displacement of the sphere’s center

4. Conclusions Nature-inspired mechanisms for tunable adhesion represent a promising avenue for the development of advanced soft robotic systems. In this work, a theoretical framework has been proposed to describe the contact interaction between a rigid sphere and a carpet of viscoelastic springs. By implementing the standard linear solid model for the