| dc.description |
The theory of the stability of a gyroscope which has a right
circular cylindrical cavity partially filled with liquid has been
developed by Stewartson (reference 1), who has shown that
instabilities occur at and near those filling-ratios for which
the frequencies of free oscillations of the liquid filling
coincide with the frequencies of precession and nutation of the
empty gyroscope when the mass of liquid is small compared with the
mass of the empty gyroscope. Then applied to the motion of a
gyrostat, Stewartson's theory shows that there is an infinite
number of filling-ratios at which instability is to be expected
theoretically; but, in practice, it is to be expected that the
effects of viscosity in the liquid filling will damp out all
but the graver modes of oscillation, and one of the objects of
the present experimental investigation was to determine how many
of the instabilities could be detected. Stewartson's theory
also predicts the range of filling-ratios for which the gyrostat
should be unstable, and a second object of the experiments
was to verify these predicted ranges. |
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