The Triwheel (or trYwheel) theory

  Today, I am here to discuss a new theory. I call it the triwheel. Most ordinary flywheels are cyndrillical, creating a square gap in between where the dart is forced through. The hycon flywheels create a circular, dart shaped gap, and consequently, they do much better. The supposed third stage of flywheel improvement is what I am proposing here.

  To understand the solution, I must first explain the problem. With standard, cyndrillical flywheels, this isn’t this problem, but with tapered flywheels like the hycon variation, the issue becomes (mathematically, at least) apparent. The smaller, curved center of the flywheel moves slower than its perimeter. I want to find out if this has any effect on dart performance.

  Each wheel takes ½ of the crush space, and therefore is curved, roughly, in the shape of a semicircle. The more curvature the flywheel has, the bigger the hypothetical speed difference should be. This is bad. We want as little speed difference as possible within the flywheel. The natural thing to do is decrease the curvature, but if this happens, the flywheels will lose their complete encapsulation (envelopment). However, if you add another flywheel to the cage, each wheel need only take ⅓ of the total crush space, decreasing the amount of tapering of each wheel, and subsequently, the speed difference.

 

  This works as a thought, but it needs numbers to back it up, so I measured the diameter of the low and high points of 3 different flywheel types to see just how much of an issue this is to begin with and how much 3 flywheels would enhance it. As a template, I used a 50mm diameter flywheel with a 9.5mm complete envelopment. Here are the results:

Type	50mm dia. 9.5mm crush 0mm spacing Standard wheel	50mm dia. 9.5mm crush 1mm spacing Standard wheel	50mm dia. 9.5mm crush 0mm spacing Triwheel
difference (inner circumference over outer circumference, 50)	40.5          127.23                ———— 50             157.08	41.5          130.38                ———— 50             157.08	45.25        142.16                ———— 50             157.08
percentage of original	81%	83%	91%
% difference	19%	17%	9%

 

*note*

The mm spacing is the distance between flywheels. In real life, they will be separated by some degree. 2 of these measurements are of the same type of flywheel, one just has a 1mm gap between them. I later dropped this for later experiments.

 

The results are quite staggering. The worst flywheel’s minimum traveled 19% less fast than its maximum. The triwheel, on the other hand, received a 9% percent difference, almost a 10% decrease. In theory, the more flywheels are added to the cage, the closer the percent will be to 0, but there is a downside. This number increases radically, so with each wheel added, the performance boost effects are less and less. Three wheels, however, still offer some decent improvement without going too far overboard.

(Insert graph)

 

For further reference and proof of this theory, I also added the measurements of 4 and 5 wheel setups, just to prove that I was on the right track, and:

 
 
 

 *note*

this graph is a rough guess of the correlation of the number of wheels to the percent difference. it is NOT 100% accurate. The line does not follow each dot exactly, rather it shows the type of correlation and is used as a visual aid.

 

Type	50mm dia. 9.5mm crush 0mm spacing Standard wheel	50mm dia. 9.5mm crush 0mm spacing Triwheel	50mm dia. 9.5mm crush 0mm spacing Quadwheel	50mm dia. 9.5mm crush 0mm spacing Pentawheel
difference (inner circumference over outer circumference, 50)	40.5      127.23             ———— 50         157.08	45.25     142.16             ———— 50          157.08	47.22     148.35               ——— 50          157.08	48.18    151.36              ——— 50         157.08
percentage of original	81%	91%	94%	96%
% difference	19%	9%	6%	4%

 

  This is just a hypothesis now, but I will be testing it soon (once my essential hardware arrives)