Board Thread:General Nerf discussion/@comment-30372652-20170517112046/@comment-31417650-20170519235043

Elliottw wrote: I know we're off topic, but I need to post a clarification. When I was talking about the 160 FPS ceiling, I meant with stock flywheels and cages. Other types of flywheels have different performance characteristics, and toothed flywheels induce some mechanical locking that makes them behave a little differently.

It also doesn't take into consideration darts. Some darts are stiffer, or made of materials that perform differently (ie. have different coefficients of friction). Bottom line, higher velocities are definitely possible.

After reviewing some of the data, I also see that in many cases increasing the RPMs past the "glass ceiling" doesn't necessarily decrease muzzle velocity. But rather than being linear, the correlation between RPMs and velocity starts to plateau. For instance a 25% increase in RPMs above the ceiling might only result in a 14% increase in muzzle velocity. It gets worse the higher you go until theoretically, it becomes zero. But at that point, we're talking extremely high RPMs.

Also, in multi-stage flywheels much higher muzzle velocities are possible, as well as much higher RPMs. So I guess the take-away is, you can achieve whatever velocity your budget allows. ...My brain hurts :p

On a more serious note, that's some cool science. That's nerf for ya. Physics stalks us everywhere...EVERYWHERE!