1

The Flyball Governor

Daniel Marlow
Joseph Henry Laboratories, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
(Mar. 5, 1997)

1 Problem
A yball governor consists of a vertical shaft with one or more arms connected to its apex
with hinges. The entire system is set in motion by turning the shaft at angular velocity .
For large , the angle of the arms to the vertical will reach some speciced value, engaging
some mechanical switch to limit further increase in the angular velocity.
For a given value of , deduce the equilibrium angle 0 and the frequency of small
oscillations about the equilbrium.
You may take the governor to have a single massless arm of length l with point mass m
at its extremity. The hinge constrains the motion of the arm to be in a vertical plane that
is xed to (rotates with) the shaft.
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2 Solution
While the equilibrium condition is readliy found vis F = ma in the rotating frame, the
oscillation analysis is expediently accomplished via Lagranges method.
Use angle as the one generalized coorindate. Then the kinetic energy is due to motion
in both vertical and horizontal planes:
1 2 1
T = ml2 + ml2 sin2 2 .
2 2
The potential energy due to gravity is just

V = mgl cos .

The Lagrangian is then

1 2 1
L = T V = ml2 + ml2 sin2 2 + mgl cos .
2 2
While we could take derivatives to nd the equation of motion, this problem is suitable for
solution by the eective-potential
 method. To expedite the notation, I divide the Lagrangian
2
by ml and introduce 0 = g/l, the frequency of oscillation of a simple pendulum of length
l. Then
1 2 1 1 2
L = + 2 sin2 + 20 cos Ve ,
2 2 2
with
1
Ve = 2 sin2 20 cos .
2
The rst term in the eective potential is concave downwards, but small for small , while
the second is concave upwards and independent of . For small , the stable equilibrium
point will be at = 0, but for large enough , the equilibrium point will be at some nonzero
.
The equilibrium point(s) 0 are found by setting dVe /d = 0, and the frequencies of
small oscillation about equilibrium are then given by = d2 Ve (0)/d 2 .

dVe
= 2 sin cos + 20 sin .
d
Thus the possible equilibrium angles are
20
0 = 0 and cos1 ,
2
where the second point does not exist unless > 0 . The latter case is, however, the desired
operating region of the yball governor. (I ignore the case 0 = as obviously unstable for
all .)
Taking the second derivative,
d2 Ve
= 2 cos 2 + 20 cos .
d2
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For the case 0 = 0 we then have


2
= 0 1 , (0 = 0).
20

Hence, this is the stable equilibrium point until > 0 . For the latter case, we nd

 
40 20
= 1 4, cos 0 = 2 .