Dynamic characteristics of rotating disk-shaped flight vehicle during skipping considering configuration

The rotating disk-shaped vehicle can significantly enhance penetration capabilities in denied environments by imitating stone skipping. Ensuring continuous skipping and reducing impact overload are critical dynamic design objectives. While setup settings are also important for the vehicle’s posture motion and load distribution during skipping, the dynamic aspects of skipping are mostly determined by the starting motion parameters. Therefore, the parameters affecting the dynamic characteristics of the rotating disk-shaped vehicle are strongly coupled, making the mechanisms of their influences remain unclear. This paper proposes a parameterized configuration for the disk-shaped vehicle. Utilizing the arbitrary Lagrange-Euler (ALE) method and penalty function method, a simulation analysis of the rotating disk-shaped vehicle is conducted. The study investigates the coupling relationship between configuration parameters and starting motion parameters and reveals their influence patterns on the vehicle's dynamic characteristics while skipping. The results demonstrate that increasing the edge curvature radius can effectively reduce the overload on the vehicle during skipping. Additionally, a better attitude stability can be achieved by increasing the spin rate. The findings presented in this paper can serve as valuable references for the design of new types of skipping anti-ship weapons, such as a rotating disk-shaped vehicle.