Analysis of Frictional Forces on a Rigid Body

Abstract

To analyse the motion of a rigid body sliding along a rough surface, information on the point of application of the resulting frictional and normal forces is usually not required. The present study proceeds further, by finding the direction and point of application of the resulting frictional and normal forces on a rigid body in planar motion. These findings are usually omitted in traditional analyses of these problems. It will be shown that such a sliding motion, which is assumed to be feasible with the finding of the acceleration, is not possible for certain combinations of coefficient of friction and geometry of the rigid body. Some interesting findings are highlighted and discussed.

On the sloshing of liquids in parallelepiped-shaped containers

“…However, these extreme cases are difficult to test with the present design because when distances are large the container tends to rotate at the end of its path around a vertical axis. This is explained by the change of the positions of the centre of mass of the system and the point where the frictional force is applied [25]. Note that in almost all the experiments the distance covered by the container with liquid inside is smaller than in the solid case, which seems to indicate that the motion of the liquid inside the box dissipates part of the initial kinetic energy that otherwise would be spent in increasing the distance covered by the box.…”