Bistability and noise-enhanced velocity of rolling motion

Abstract

We investigate the motion of a hard cylinder rolling down a soft inclined plane. The cylinder is subjected to a viscous drag force and stochastic fluctuations due to the surrounding medium. In a wide range of parameters we observe bistability of the rolling velocity. In dependence on the parameters, increasing noise level may lead to increasing or decreasing average velocity of the cylinder. The approximative analytical theory agrees with numerical results.