Chiplight
"Counter rotating disks(such as coaxial props on a single shaft) nullify gyroscopic precession effects. You might expect twice the resistance to movement out of plane, but in fact it is near zero."
You mention
"near zero". Can you shed anymore light on this? I did the Beaty two counter-rotating bicycle wheel thing and the gyroscopic precession was gone. However, there did seem to be a
little more resistance to movement when the wheels were rotating, as compared to when they were non-rotating. Maybe it was just wishfull thinking. I'll try to get the wheels to rotate faster and see if that changes anything (besides busting the axle
)
"If you mount two gyroscopes with their axles at right angles to one another on a platform, and place the platform inside a set of gimbals, the platform will remain completely rigid as the gimbals rotate in any way they please. This is this basis of inertial navigation systems (INS)."
This statement, from the Internet, may mean that the two counterrotating rotors would slightly contribute to the stability of a rigid intermeshing configuration. This is because the masts on the intermeshing UniCopter are at 18º to each other. Do you have any thoughts?
Graviman,
"BTW i'm confused on rotor rotation direction of Synchrolite --> Unicopter. If Unicopter is a development of Synchrolite (which is by far the best engineering approach) then i really would settle on one rotation direction - ideally outboard advancing so inboard can (eventually) be feathered."
The rotors on the SynchroLite turn inside forward (breaststroke). This appears to be typical of all previous intermeshing rotorcraft. Either Flettner or Kaman tried the opposite direction and then went back to breaststroke.
The rotors on the Unicopter turn outside forward. this was done to take advantage of the 'wanted' lateral dissymitry of lift.
Stepniewski's concept is also outside forward.
"Considering differential collective ineffectiveness/reversal in autorotation, i really don't understand why the controls would be reversed as long as rotor loading was >0g"
There is an earlier thread that discusses this. Basically, in powered flight the rotors are driving the air where as in autorotation the air is driving the rotors.
Dave