The motion of rotating cylinders sliding on pebbled ice

Abstract

We consider the motion of a cylinder with the same mass and sizeas a curling rock, but with a very different contact geometry.Whereas the contact area of a curling rock is a thin annulus havinga radius of 6.25 cm and width of about 4 mm, the contact area of the cylinderinvestigated takes the form of several linear segments regularly spacedaround the outer edge of the cylinder, directed radially outward from the center,with length 2 cm and width 4 mm. We consider the motion of this cylinderas it rotates and slides over ice having the nature of the ice surfaceused in the sport of curling. We have previously presented a physicalmodel that accounts for the motion of curling rocks; we extend this modelto explain the motion of the cylinder under investigation. In particular,we focus on slow rotation, i.e., the rotational speed of the contact areasof the cylinder about the center of mass is small compared to thetranslational speed of the center of mass.The principal features of the model are (i) that the kineticfriction induces melting of the ice, with the consequence that thereexists a thin film of liquid water lying between the contact areasof the cylinder and the ice; (ii) that the radial segmentsdrag some of the thin liquid film around the cylinder as it rotates,with the consequence that the relative velocity between the cylinderand the thin liquid film is significantly different than the relativevelocity between the cylinder and the underlying solid ice surface.Since it is the former relative velocity that dictates the nature of themotion of the cylinder, our model predicts, and observations confirm, thatsuch a slowly rotating cylinder stops rotating well before translationalmotion ceases. This is in sharp contrast to the usual case of most slowlyrotating cylinders, where both rotational and translational motion ceaseat the same instant. We have verified this prediction of our model bycareful comparison to the actual motion of a cylinder having a contactarea as described.PACS Nos.: 46.00, 01.80+b