Abstract
Wind tunnel and free-flight tests were made to know the characteristics of the two-dimensional motion of square and rectangular flat plates in uniform flow, and the results were compared with those of numerical integrations of the equations of motion presented in a previous paper. It has become clear that (1) the plates released in a flow with initial angles of attack from zero to 180 degrees have various modes of motion, which can be classified into rotation with upward Magnus force, translation, rotation with downward Magnus force and intermediate ones, (2) the translatory mode of motion become relatively dominant with increase of aspect ratio and (3) the trajectories obtained by the numerical integrations agree approximately with the experimental results.
