ENG1001 Course Notes

WEEK 11. RIGID BODY

ROTATION
Revised January 2020
 ENG1001 Course Notes
Week 11: Rigid Body Rotation

Table of Contents
11.1 ROTATION OF A RIGID BODY ........................................................................... 11-3
11.1.1 Particle Rotation: When is it a Bad Assumption? ............................................ 11-5
11.1.2 The Moment of Inertia ..................................................................................... 11-8
11.1.3 Relating Torques and Forces ......................................................................... 11-11
11.1.4 Dealing with Common Shapes....................................................................... 11-11
11.1.5 Rotating Bodies and Friction ......................................................................... 11-14

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Week 11: Rigid Body Rotation

11.1 ROTATION OF A RIGID BODY

So far, we have restricted our analysis of rotational motion to the rotation of a particle. This is
a significant assumption. It limits our ability to describe several situations where a body
rotates, and introduces an assumption that limits the accuracy of our model.

Recalling when a particle is a particle

You will recall that a particle is defined when its shape does not influence its motion. For
rotational motion, we assumed that an object may be considered a particle if the radius of
rotation is significantly larger than the size of the object.

This leads to three important questions:

• How big does the radius of rotation need to be so that we can keep assuming that we
have a particle rotating?

• What errors do we introduce by assuming a rotating object is a particle?

• How do we analyse the motion of an object that has a small radius of rotation when
compared to the size of the object?

An alternative approach
An alternative approach, that provides an accurate model in almost all cases, is to assume that
the object is a rigid body. Recall that for a rigid body, the body does not change shape, the
rotational motion is dependent on the size and shape of the body, and the motion is dependent
on where forces are applied on the body.

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Week 11: Rigid Body Rotation

Many objects can be well approximated by a rigid body. In the following modules, you will
learn how to analyse the motion of a rigid body.

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Week 11: Rigid Body Rotation

11.1.1 Particle Rotation: When is it a Bad Assumption?

Imagine the International space station orbiting the Earth. The ISS
is 109 metres long and
orbits the Earth at an altitude of 410 km from sea level or 6781 km from the centre of the
Earth. The orbital speed of the ISS is 7666 m/s equivalent to an angular velocity of ω =
0.0011 rad/sec about the centre of the Earth. At this speed, the ISS completes each orbit of
the Earth in about 92 minutes.

When analysing its motion, we often consider the ISS as a particle. How does this limit our
analysis? We'll consider this example further in this module.
The most important variables are...
What is the most important variable to know as an engineer studying dynamics? Surely this
varies depending on the problem at hand?
Ultimately, the force acting on an object is usually the most important variable for an
engineer to know. Knowing external forces acting on an object, the engineer can calculate
internal shear stresses and pressures, and design the shape of the object, and the material it is
made from to ensure it does not fail.

Considering Newton's second law, we know that the acceleration, a, is proportional to the
sum of the forces acting on the object.

We also know that, from the acceleration, we can determine the object's position and
velocity.

So in general, the force and the acceleration are the two most important variables that you can
calculate to determine an object's motion, and the possibility of the object failing due to its
motion.

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How important are the angular velocity and angular acceleration?

The angular velocity, ω, and angular accelerationα, very concisely describe the motion of a
rotating object. However, they are not directly related to the forces acting on the object. In
addition to knowing these two terms, we also need to know the mass of the object and the
radius of rotation to determine the forces acting on our object.
It is the need to know the radius
of rotation that may cause an oversimplification when
analysing rotational motion, this is dependent on the size of the object.

The ISS travels at a constant angular velocity around the Earth. From this, we know that it
has a radial component of acceleration.
Given the radius of the ISS orbit (6781 km), and angular velocity (2/3 rev/hr) we can estimate
the radial component of acceleration on the ISS as at the ISS orbital altitude this is almost
precisely the gravitational force exerted by the Earth.

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However, the ISS is over 100 metres in length. This means that the part of the ISS furthest
from the Earth is rotating at a radius of:

while the part of the ISS closest to the Earth is orbiting at a radius of :

From this, we see that the acceleration exerted due to rotation vary from
at the point closest to the Earth, to at the point furthest from the Earth.
2
The difference in acceleration between these two points is quite small, just 0.0002 m/s . But
from Newton's second law, we know that this will induce a force difference between the
furthest part of the ISS and the nearest part of the ISS. Given the mass of
the ISS is 450 000
kg, this small difference in acceleration can lead to significant forces in the structure of the
ISS which have to be designed for by aerospace engineers.

Closer to home
The variation in forces acting on a rotating object are more apparent the smaller the radius of
rotation and the larger the object. Take for example, a yo-yo, rotating at the end of a piece of
string.

Assuming that the yo-yo is a particle becomes an increasingly worse approximation, the
smaller the radius of rotation. To model these situations, we consider the moment of inertia,
and torque.

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11.1.2 The Moment of Inertia

Figure 1: The Falkirk Wheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel) in Scotland, an

alternative to traditional lochs on a canal system. An example of rotational motion in
practice.

Moment of inertia: a simple description

You will be familiar with the concept of mass, and its effect on motion in a straight line. The
heavier an object, the more force is required to accelerate (change the velocity of) that object.
This theory was first described by Isaac Newton in his second law
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_laws_of_motion):

Considering Newton's second law, we may imagine it as:

When rotating an object, we need an equivalent definition. That is, how much effort is
required to rotate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotation) that object? We need an equation
that is just as straightforward to understand and apply as Newton's second law.

Everything is just made up of lots of particles

We can describe the motion of any body simply by breaking it up into lots of tiny particles,
considering the motion for each tiny particle, and then summing the overall motion to
determine a model for the body as a whole. Let's use the example of a propeller from a ship.
The propeller rotates around its hub, and we know that the propeller is made up of billions of
particles. Let's choose one of those particles at random and think about the forces acting on
that particle in order to rotate it around the hub.

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All objects are made up of particles - we can use this fact to help us define equations for
motion

Using this theory, we can rewrite Newton's third law to describe the force acting on our
particle as:

Here indicates that the mass of the particle is very small, and indicates that the
resultant force acting on the particle is also very small (even for a very large acceleration).

We know that we can relate angular acceleration to the instantaneous acceleration of a

particle, through the equation:

Where is the distance from our particle to the axis of rotation, and is the angular
acceleration. Therefore, we may re-write our equation for the motion of a particle as:

We also know that the amount of effort to rotate an object may be referred to as 'Torque
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque)', which has the definition:

Therefore, our equation for the rotation of a tiny particle becomes:

or

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This states that the torque (or effort) required to increase or decrease the rate of rotation of
the particle is proportional to

Finally - we have to sum the effect of rotating each of the billions of particles to come up
with an equation that describes how much effort is required to the whole propeller. We use
integration to do this:

or

Where is called the moment of inertia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_of_inertia).

What does the moment of inertia mean anyway?

The moment of inertia describes how hard it is to change an object's angular velocity. A
higher moment of inertia means more effort is required to speed up or slow down the rate of
rotation.

The moment of inertia is dependent on both the mass of an object (m) and on the average
distance the mass is from the centre of rotation. When most of the mass is away from the axis
of rotation, the moment of inertia is higher.

What to take away from this Module

1. The moment of inertia describes how difficult it is to speed up or slow down
the rotation of a spinning object. 

2. The moment of inertia is dependent on the mass of the object, and how far the
mass is from the axis of rotation. 

3. Torque may be related to angular acceleration and the moment of inertia
through: 


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11.1.3 Relating Torques and Forces

11.1.4 Dealing with Common Shapes

The parallel axis method and composite bodies
As we have seen, the moment of inertia describes how much effort is required to change the
angular acceleration of a rigid body.

Calculating the moment of inertia from first principles can be time consuming, in general you
need to solve:

However, for many common shapes, the moment of inertia is already well known, and
engineers use these definitions when solving problems involving the rotation of a rigid body.
Examples of common shapes and their moments of inertia may be found in this link:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_moments_of_inertia).

The parallel axis method

The equations that are provided in common lists of moments of inertia provide the moment of
inertia of an object rotating about its centre of mass. Often, we need to know the moment of
inertia of the object when it is not rotating about its centre of mass.

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In this situation, we can use the parallel axis method. Provided that the axis of rotation is
parallel to the axis defined about the object's centre of mass, we can find the moment of
inertia about any other point through the equation.

The parallel axis method allows us to conveniently consider more complicated problems
involving rigid body motion.

The parallel axis theory allows us to calculate the moment of inertia for a body rotating

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about an axis parallel to the one provided in the definition.

Combining Moments of Inertia

Often, we have oddly shaped rigid bodies that are rotating, and we cannot find a generalised
equation for the object's shape in our list of moments of inertia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_moments_of_inertia).

However, we can add the moments of inertia of many parts of a body to form the composite
body's total moment of inertia. This is shown in the figure below

Image credit: http://bonesbearings.com/support/maintenance/

This allows us to calculate the moment of inertia of quite complicated objects, quickly. Using
the moment of inertia we can apply

Allowing us to describe the kinematics of an object that is rotating.

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11.1.5 Rotating Bodies and Friction

You have already read about the force of friction for two surfaces sliding past each other, and
should be familiar with the concepts of static friction and kinetic friction. In this module, we
consider how friction relates to rotating objects. For example, a wheel that is in contact with
the ground.

A wheel slipping against a surface

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Consider a wheel that is slipping against a surface (which may be the ground). For this case,
we'll assume that the wheel is being driven, perhaps by a motor, at a set speed, what is the
force of friction exerted by the surface?

We know that friction will act to stop the slipping between the wheel and the surface, and
will therefore act to slow the wheel down. Knowing this, we can draw a free body diagram
for the wheel, and another free body diagram for the surface

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Week 11: Rigid Body Rotation

Notice that the force of friction on the surface will be equal and opposite to that on the wheel
due to Newton's third law of motion. We also know that the type of friction is kinetic friction,
because the wheel and the surface are sliding past each other:

The force of friction will be dependent on the normal force between the wheel and surface.
The friction force creates a torque, acting on the wheel acting to slow the wheel down.

Video Link 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z013iS8MkU&index=6&list=PLk9VWyaRoQCA_xwEn
Uub9qoP_S47MsjEt

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