Click link below to view drawing.

Drawing from Popsci.com


http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-11/ferretti-yachts-mitsubishi-anti-rolling-gyro

They used this drawing to show the impact of anti roll gyro.

Note that the roll is bigger the higher one goes off the waterline.

opps, Anti Rolling Gyro (ARG) invented by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

A distinct advantage of an express cruiser over a flybridge boat.

Now SB, care to explain in detail how the gyroscopic principles apply in the Anti Rolling Gyro and how they stabilize a boat?

i can answer that one. a gyro is a midlle eastern lamb sandwich on pita bread served by most street vendors in new york city. eat one and hop on a boat and you'll stay close to the head for a good long time. since the head is inside the cabin, the added weight will lower the center of gravity and help prevent any rolling motion. however, if the seas are rough enough, nothing will help and the boat will flip completely over. you'd still count yourself lucky as drowning is preferable to a really bad monkey meat sandwich.

Hehehe. Interesting BT.

Also interested in learning more about the balancing system.

Found this after a quick search... Gyro article

Well, aside from the monkey sangwich, I kinda sorta know how a gyro works. It's what helps to keep those segway's standing up. However, the motor that drives the wheels is also what keeps the segway up---seems a boat is going to need some sort of thrusters to counter roll? Or, some sort of moving ballast? (that would have to be some pretty quick ballast!)

---or a heavy weight spinning at 10,000 rpm might do it! However, while a spinning gyro will naturally fight side-to-side movement, it'll also fight forward movement...

The third paragraph down from the top in this...

http://www.bertram.com/about-arg.aspx

Another classic bit of humor brought to you by our good friend in NY.

Bravo Bruce! Still cleaning the keyboard and wiping my chin!

Note to self: Don't be drinking anything when reading Bruce's posts.

ditto!

Bruce, good humor!

D-Rod, haven't you taken dynamics yet?

Gyroscopes, angular momentum and stability was on one of my mid-terms. Real fun stuff with multi-variable double derivatives.

No Deep. That's not for until next Fall. Junior year! I'm a sophomore.

Pardon me whilst I sit here and flex my knuckles before I respond. FR, you have touched on a subject that I actually know something about. In the USAF I worked on a gyro stabilized Inertial Navigation System and my feeble old brain still does recall some of the principles.

Gyros (not BT's sandwiches) use a heavy wheel spinning at high rpm about an axis. In boat uses, if the axis is perpendicular to the centerline of the boat, and parallel to the surface of the water (horizontal as opposed to vertical mounted) it will reduce roll. Think of the axis of the gyro mounted in a starboard-port line somewhere along the midship of the boat. The gyro would be spinning on a line that is along the centerline of the boat. Mounted like that it will have no effect at all on forward or reverse motion of the boat.

A spinning gyro tends to maintain the plane that it is spinning in. Any force that tries to move the gyro side to side will result in a force that is 90 degrees away from the initial force. Mounted low in the bilge of a boat, the gyro will resist any side to side rolling movement. The force of the waves that tries to roll the boat will be transferred by the gyro into a forward or reverse push. The things that determine whether the resultant push is forward or reverse are (a) the direction the gyro is spinning and (b) the direction of the force applied to the side (from roll) of the gyro.

Now, after reading through all my rubbish if you want a clear explanation go to Wikipedia and type in Gyroscope.