Exact analytic solution for the rotation of a rigid body having spherical ellipsoid of inertia and subjected to a constant torque

The exact analytic solution is introduced for the rotational motion of a rigid body having three equal principal moments of inertia and subjected to an external torque vector which is constant for an observer fixed with the body, and to arbitrary initial angular velocity. In the paper a parametrization of the rotation by three complex numbers is used. In particular, the rows of the rotation matrix are seen as elements of the unit sphere and projected, by stereographic projection, onto points on the complex plane. In this representation, the kinematic differential equation reduces to an equation of Riccati type, which is solved through appropriate choices of substitutions, thereby yielding an analytic solution in terms of confluent hypergeometric functions. The rotation matrix is recovered from the three complex rotation variables by inverse stereographic map. The results of a numerical experiment confirming the exactness of the analytic solution are reported. The newly found analytic solution is valid for any motion time length and rotation amplitude. The present paper adds a further element to the small set of special cases for which an exact solution of the rotational motion of a rigid body exists.     

Quaternions and the rotation of a rigid body

The orientation of an arbitrary rigid body is specified in terms of a quaternion based upon a set of four Euler parameters. A corresponding set of four generalized angular momentum variables is derived (another quaternion) and then used to replace the usual three-component angular velocity vector to specify the rate by which the orientation of the body with respect to an inertial frame changes. The use of these two quaternions, coordinates and conjugate moments, naturally leads to a formulation of rigid-body rotational dynamics in terms of a system of eight coupled first-order differential equations involving the four Euler parameters and the four conjugate momenta. The equations are formally simple, easy to handle and free of singularities. Furthermore, integration is fast, since only arithmetic operations are involved.     

Solution to the rotation of the elastic earth by method of rigid dynamics

Hamiltonian mechanics is applied to the problem of the rotation of the elastic Earth. We first show the process for the formulation of the Hamiltonian for rotation of a deformable body and the derivation of the equations of motion from it. Then, based on a simple model of deformation, the solution is given for the period of Euler motion, UT1 and the nutation of the elastic Earth. In particular it is shown that the elasticity of the Earth acts on the nutation so as to decrease the Oppolzer terms of the nutation of the rigid Earth by about 30 per cent. The solution is in good agreement with results which have been obtained by other, different approaches.     

A complex analytic solution for the attitude motion of a near-symmetric rigid body under body-fixed torques

Although analytic solutions for the attitude motion of a rigid body are available for several special cases, a comprehensive theory does not exist in the literature for the more complicated problems found in spacecraft dynamics. In the present paper, analytic solutions in complex form are derived for the attitude motion of a near-symmetric rigid body under the influence of constant body-fixed torques. The solution is very compact, which enables efficient and rapid machine computation. Numerical simulations reveal that the solution is very accurate when applied to typical spinning spacecraft problems.     

About the periodic solutions of a rigid body in a central Newtonian field

The equations of motion of a rigid body about a fixed point in a central Newtonian field is reduced to the equation of plane motion under the action of potential and gyroscopic forces, using the isothermal coordinates on the inertia ellipsoid.The construction of periodic solutions near the equilibrium points, by using the Lipaunov theorem of holomorphic integral, is obtained and the necessary and sufficient conditions for the stability of the system are given.     

A Simplified Kinetic Element Formulation for the Rotation of a Perturbed Mass-Asymmetric Rigid Body

Euler's equations, describing the rotation of an arbitrarily torqued mass asymmetric rigid body, are scaled using linear transformations that lead to a simplified set of first order ordinary differential equations without the explicit appearance of the principal moments of inertia. These scaled differential equations provide trivial access to an analytical solution and two constants of integration for the case of torque-free motion. Two additional representations for the third constant of integration are chosen to complete two new kinetic element sets that describe an osculating solution using the variation of parameters. The elements' physical representations are amplitudes and either angular displacement or initial time constant in the torque-free solution. These new kinetic elements lead to a considerably simplified variation of parameters solution to Euler's equations. The resulting variational equations are quite compact. To investigate error propagation behaviour of these new variational formulations in computer simulations, they are compared to the unmodified equations without kinematic coupling but under the influence of simulated gravity-gradient torques.     

Motion in the field of a rotationally symmetric potential: Exact use of an approximate equation for the derivative of the field of directions along the normal to a trajectory

The previously derived equation (Agekyan 1974) for the derivative ?f/?n of the field of directions along the normal to a trajectory is approximate, because differentiating along the normal takes the point out of the orbit and changes the third integral of motion. However, on the envelope of the trajectory, i.e., on the contour of an orbit or a fold, ?f/?n undergoes a discontinuity of the second kind. Many authors have used this property to find points of the contours of orbits and folds. Although the integrable equation is approximate, the envelope points are determined accurately.