Effects of a nonlocal microstructure on peeling of thin films

An extension to the dimensionally-reduced formulation for peridynamic thin plates, proposed by the Authors, for the large displacement regime is here put forward. The model, validated against numerical simulations, addresses peeling in nonlocal thin films. In the problem of a thin film attached to a soft substrate, it is found that nonlocality of the peeled-off layer can greatly influence the whole structural response and induce useful overall mechanical properties, such as de-localization of damage and less destructive failure modes, pointing at the possibility of implementing specific networks of nonlocal interactions, which
corresponds to the lattice-equivalent structure of the nonlocal model treated, between material particles for engineering purposes.