How suction cups fail

Suction cups occur in nature and technology, and are widely used in a range of situations across many length scales. They often cannot afford to fail owing to catastrophic consequences associated with examples such as lifting large glass sheets, and in manipulating delicate tissues and organisms. But how do they fail? We report an experimental study that captures the failure dynamics of soft suction cups that involves an interplay of elastic deformation, viscous lubrication flows and interfacial instabilities over time scales that range from milliseconds to hours. Our study allows us to propose a design to prolong the holding time till failure.