Flight Simulation of Boomerang Using CFD

Abstract

A boomerang thrown properly into the air can fly in an elliptical path and return to the point of origin. In this study, such a motion of the boomerang was numerically simulated to clarify the mechanism of the motion. The simulation was conducted by the double CFD method which is the coupling method of the computational fluid dynamics and the computational flight dynamics. We considered the case that a small flat boomerang was thrown with a translational and a rotational velocity, an angle of the translational velocity from a horizontal plane, and no roll angle. Results showed that the boomerang lifted and traveled in a path with changing roll and pitch angles due to a pressure distribution on its surface, and returned to a point near the origin. Furthermore, an experiment was performed to confirm the validity of the computational results, and the experimental result was qualitatively corresponding to the computational results.