  Adhesive contact between a thin elastic sheet and a substrate in a liquid
environment arises in a range of biological, physical and technological
applications. By considering the dynamics of this process that naturally
couples fluid flow, long wavelength elastic deformations and microscopic
adhesion, and solving the resulting partial differential equation numerically,
we uncover the short-time dynamics of the onset of adhesion and the long-time
dynamics of a steady propagating adhesion front. Simple scaling laws
corroborate our results for characteristic waiting-time for adhesive contact,
as well as the speed of the adhesion front. A similarity analysis of the
governing partial differential equation further allows us to determine the
shape of a fluid filled bump ahead of the adhesion zone. Finally, our analysis
yields the boundary conditions for the apparent elastohydrodynamic contact
line, generalizing the well known conditions for static elastic contact while
highlighting how microscale physics regularizes the dynamics of contact.
