Bicycles are another commonly-misunderstood system covered on cam.ac.uk. A lot of people seem to think they stay upright by gyroscopic effects. It's more a case of the rider making corrections, and when there is no rider (or hands-free) it works by a feedback loop involving the geometry of the forks.
You can hold a bike wheel in your hand vertically and spin it, when you try to move it to a horizontal orientation you can feel the extent of the gyro force. It's significant.
It's enough to keep a loose rolling wheel upright by itself, but nowhere near strong enough to keep an entire bicycle plus rider upright. I don't think rim mass has much effect on handling - it's all about the geometry.
The force is proportional to speed, you can countersteer a bicycle just the same as a motorcycle. There are 2 separate steering techniques, one for high speed (countersteering) and one for low speed (steering) on motorcycles and bicycles - that results from gyroscopic wheel force. The geometry doesn't change, only thing that changes as speed increases on the bike is the gyro force.
Comments
Handy video showing relative speed above and below the curved wing surface, and non-equal times :
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/how-wings-really-work
Bicycles are another commonly-misunderstood system covered on cam.ac.uk. A lot of people seem to think they stay upright by gyroscopic effects. It's more a case of the rider making corrections, and when there is no rider (or hands-free) it works by a feedback loop involving the geometry of the forks.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/opinion-how-does-a...
Gyroscopic effect is very minor unless you're going very fast, i.e. motorbike speeds and motorbike weight wheels/tyres.
That becomes very evident once you consider how slow a bike can move and still be very stable.
You can hold a bike wheel in your hand vertically and spin it, when you try to move it to a horizontal orientation you can feel the extent of the gyro force. It's significant.
It's enough to keep a loose rolling wheel upright by itself, but nowhere near strong enough to keep an entire bicycle plus rider upright. I don't think rim mass has much effect on handling - it's all about the geometry.
The force is proportional to speed, you can countersteer a bicycle just the same as a motorcycle. There are 2 separate steering techniques, one for high speed (countersteering) and one for low speed (steering) on motorcycles and bicycles - that results from gyroscopic wheel force. The geometry doesn't change, only thing that changes as speed increases on the bike is the gyro force.
The interrupted smoke is a great visual! I'd like to see that with a zero angle of attack.