Theoretical and Experimental Investigation into the flight of an X-Zylo

Abstract

Flying Gyroscopes are fascinating flight objects, which, due to gyroscopic stabilization, can achieve surprisingly long flight distances when thrown with rapid spin. The most common example hereby is a traditional Frisbee disc. This paper focuses on a similar object called X-Zylo, that shows a remarkable straight flight despite its simple geometry. The main aim of the present study is to investigate the flight behavior of the X-Zylo and to build a reliable groundwork for further quantitative parameter studies on ring wing configurations. To achieve this goal, a six degree of freedom model to predict the flight trajectory was developed. The trajectory computation uses interpolated high-fidelity CFD simulation data to calculate the acting moments and forces on the object during flight. A launch contraption was built to be able to validate the theory systematically and reproducible in experiments without human factors involved in the launch. Despite the complexity of the flight, the theoretical simulations match the real world data qualitatively, however quantitative differences still prevail. The investigation shows that the deviation between theory and experiment mostly stems from uncertainties in the CFD data as well as the optical recording of the experimental data. Despite the methods outperforming those of prior studies, advancements still have to be made in those areas in order to obtain better quantitative accordance between theory and experiment.