How a road roller works

A road roller is a compaction vehicle utilized for compacting soil, gravel, asphalt, crushed stone sub-base layer and other surface material. Rollers are commonly used for road construction or for creating compact foundations for large areas, although they can also be used in large areas as diverse as landfill sites or agricultural projects.

The main use for rollers is to crush, knead or vibrate loose materials by applying direct pressure. The rolling process is used to compact loosely bound foundation materials, so they remain compacted and remain bound together. There are various types of rollers, and their use depends on the particular job on hand. These include Cylinder road rollers, Vibratory rollers, Rubber-tyre rollers and Tamping rollers. In this blog we will focus on the Cylinder roller.

Cylinder road roller

This is probably the most common roller in use today. The traditional cylinder roller is a simple drum or set of drums typically made of steel. They usually come in one of two types.

The tandem roller has single drum wheels at the front and rear of the machine while 3-wheeled rollers have one larger drum wheel and the front and 2 behind. They are also known as smooth wheeled rollers and are mostly used for consolidating stone or similar crushed material on flat terrain. They work best with surface dressings such as rolling tarmacadam to create a smooth, flat surface.

The weight of both types of cylinder roller varies from 2 to 8 tons, and weight distribution can be adjusted by filling the drum wheels with ballast. Some rollers will have eater sprinkling systems for keeping the roller drums clean.

Slow moving, with an operating speed of 2 to 8 kph they typically need to make eight passes for adequate compacting of a 20cm sub-base layer although this depends on the type of layer.