Eur. Phys. J. E (2010) 33: 327-333
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2010-10678-y

Regular Article

Rolling friction for hard cylinder and sphere on viscoelastic solid

¹ IFF, FZ-Jülich, D-52428, Jülich, Germany
² School of Chemistry, Tel Aviv University, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel

^* e-mail: b.persson@fz-juelich.de

Received: 6 August 2010
Accepted: 8 November 2010
Published online: 25 November 2010

Abstract

We calculate the friction force acting on a hard cylinder or spherical ball rolling on a flat surface of a viscoelastic solid. The rolling-friction coefficient depends non-linearly on the normal load and the rolling velocity. For a cylinder rolling on a viscoelastic solid characterized by a single relaxation time Hunter has obtained an exact result for the rolling friction, and our result is in very good agreement with his result for this limiting case. The theoretical results are also in good agreement with experiments of Greenwood and Tabor. We suggest that measurements of rolling friction over a wide range of rolling velocities and temperatures may constitute a useful way to determine the viscoelastic modulus of rubber-like materials.