Rolling friction for hard cylinder and sphere on viscoelastic solid

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.

Mechanics of rough contacts in elastic and viscoelastic thin layers

“…Figure 4 shows the dimensionless separation s/h rms as a function of the load σ 0 /E * . We observe that , at relatively high loads, in agreement with many theoretical and numerical predictions ( [5], [34] , [30]), a logarithmic dependence between s/h rms and σ 0 /E * is found. At smaller loads, such a behavior is lost due the finiteness of the rigid surface employed in the computations: indeed, when the separation overcomes the maximum value of the heights h max , no contact can occur and, therefore, for low loads, the logarithmic trend cannot keep on being valid.…”

Effect of thickness and boundary conditions on the behavior of viscoelastic layers in sliding contact with wavy profiles

“…Hence, the proposed solution can be exploited in multiscale approaches (e.g. [21,22]) to capture the features of the viscoelastic contact of real randomly rough surfaces, which are the main focus of interest in modern contact mechanics [4,5,[23][24][25][26][27][28]. Moreover, following the path firstly proposed by Burmister [39][40][41], interesting results may be obtained even in the field of layered materials, by exploiting the solutions provided in [37,38].…”

“…The growing interest in polymeric materials, strongly supported by industrial demands, has boosted the scientific effort in such field of materials. The demanding problem of an accurate modelling of the contact behavior has been addressed by analytical approaches [1][2][3][4][5][6][7], numerical sophisticated simulations [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] and experimental investigations [16][17][18][19][20]. One of the most common assumptions in contact mechanics is that the contact bodies can be well represented by semi-infinite solids.…”

Theory of viscoelastic lubrication

“…Studies of friction involving viscoelastic solids have mainly focused on the investigation of dry contacts [11][12][13][14]. Rolling friction experiments for smooth surfaces are usually performed with a hard cylinder or sphere rolling on a flat rubber substrate [14][15][16][17].…”