Rolling Resistance

One component of vehicle resistance is rolling resistance. This is the force opp
osing the forward motion of a vehicle due to the rolling of its wheels. It doesn
't include the wind forces. At low speed in still air on level ground, almost al
l the resistance is rolling resistance. If you've ever pushed an automobile by h
and, you should know what rolling resistance is: it's the force you have to push
the car with to keep it rolling at steady speed on level ground. Besides rollin
g resistance, there's another resistance known as aerodynamic drag. This is the
wind force against the vehicle. You can feel this force by sticking your open ha
nd out the window of a fast moving car. Aerodynamic drag increases proportional
to the square of the velocity so it's not very significant at low speed. It also
takes additional force to move a vehicle up a grade or to accelerate its speed
but these are neither rolling resistance nor aerodynamic drag.
Rolling resistance may be given as a percentage of the vehicle weight. For examp
le, if an automobile weighs 3000 lb. and has 1% rolling resistance, then it woul
d take 30 lbs. (1% of 3000) to push it slowly on level ground. But rolling resis
tance is commonly expressed in units of "per thousand" which is ten times the pe
rcentage value. In such units, the typical automobile tire has a rolling resista
nce of about 10 (when properly inflated). Truck tires inflate to much higher pre
ssure (such as 100 pounds) and typically have a rolling resistance of about 7. R
ailroad steel wheels on a steel rail have a low rolling resistance of between 1
to 2. The 1 value is for a fully loaded railroad freight car, while the 2 value
is for an empty car. Rail passenger cars tend to be closer to 2 than 1.
For railroads, rolling resistance (in percentage terms) is lower when the vehicl
e is heavier. With a heavier load, the total rolling resistance goes up, but not
as fast as the load increases. This "economy of scale" is due in part to the sp
reading out of the pressure caused by the heavier wheel load along a longer leng
th of rail. It one doubles the wheel load, the pressure under the rail doesn't d
ouble, because the additional force is spread out over a longer length of rail.
Of course, there's a trade-off since very heavy loads will cause more damage to
the roadbed.
Why is the rolling resistance so much less for a steel wheel than for a pneumati
c tire? The reason is that the rubber tires flex a lot and thereby absorb much m
ore energy than the steel wheel which flexes far less. If you look at the tires
on parked autos you will notice a big flat spot at the bottom of the tires where
the tire is deformed. As the tire rolls, this deformation is applied to the ent
ire tread surface (and sidewalls too) of the tire. The result is much flexing of
the rubber which causes the tire to absorb energy and become hot.
In addition to the tire energy loss, there are some other losses that contribute
to rolling resistance for both rail and highway vehicles. These are: friction l
osses in the wheel bearings, shaking and vibration of both the roadbed and the v
ehicle (including energy absorbed by the vehicle's shock absorbers), and slight
sliding of the wheels on the pavement/rail. These losses have been included in t
he example values shown above. Such losses are relatively more significant for r
ail since pure rail rolling resistance is so low.