Modeling the role of interfacial adhesion in the rolling resistance of a hyperelastic wheel

Adhesion theory has achieved remarkable success in the interpretation of sliding friction, while the adhesion mechanism in rolling friction is not fully understood. In this work, an adhesion model was proposed to investigate the rolling contact. With the model, the contact stress and the rolling resistance to free-rolling were calculated. It is found that the tensile stress at the contact trailing edge can result in crack blunting, such that the adhesive rolling of the hyperelastic wheel is a discontinuous crack propagation along the interface. Besides, stickpeel feature in the rolling resistance curves was identified, which is the analogy to the stick-slip in the sliding friction. The proposed model can be used to investigate the adhesion issue in the rolling friction.