Can the Magnus effect destabilize a ball supported in a jet?

It is well known that it is possible to stably support a ball in a gravitational field using a fluid jet. To what extent this “stable state” is dependent on the rotational motion of the ball is, however, unclear. At the same time, it is known that a rotating body induces significant lift through the Magnus effect. This suggests that the stability of the system may be dependent on the moment of inertia of the ball. In this work, we conduct a computational study, using a moving mesh Navier-Stokes solver, where we systematically vary the moment of inertia of the ball to isolate its effect on the dynamics of the system. Preliminary results suggest that the system remains stable as the moment of inertia becomes large.