The tearing of a pressure-sensitive (‘tacky’) adhesive is examined. Two flexible strips bonded by a layer of adhesive are passed between adjacent cylindrical guides and peeled apart, causing the adhesive layer to separate into two about a surface tension membrane. Treating the adhesive as a Newtonian viscous fluid, the slow-flow problem is solved by an iterative numerical scheme in which the surface tension membrane boundary in the vicinity of the region of separation is approximated by a shear-free boundary given by a sixth-degree polynomial expression. The energy dissipation rate, a measure of the ‘strength’ of the adhesive, is obtained from the flow.

The solution method is also used to determine the similar flow induced by two counter-rotating rollers partially immersed in a large bath of fluid. The results are in fairly good agreement with available experimental data. The symmetrical eddies observed under the lowest point of the surface tension membrane in the stable flow between the rollers are reproduced in the solution, proving that fluid inertia effects are not essential for their existence.