Principal Vectors for Spatial Dynamical Analysis by Fischer

Otto Fischer was during the late 19th and early 20th century the founder of 3-D human gait analysis. From motion recordings he calculated by hand the inverse dynamics of humans in motion, for which he discovered and used the principal vectors of a system of moving bodies. With the principal vectors the equations of motion and the kinetic...

Aeroelastic Loads Modeling for Composite Aircraft Design Support

With regard to the simulation of structural vibrations and consequent aeroelastic loads in aircraft components, the use of elastic axis e.a as reference of vibrations is quite common. The e.a decouples the bending and torsion degrees of freedom (D.o.F) during the dynamic analysis. The use of the e.a to decouple the bending and torsion in...

Dynamics and control of a spacecraft with a moving, pulsating ball in a spherical cavity

A model with two interacting bodies, for a spacecraft with liquid, has been developed. The spacecraft without liquid is the "tank" and is characterized by its inertial properties and the location and size of a spherical cavity. In the cavity is located the "slug", a sphere of uniform density with a variable radius. At the point of contact...

A reference model for the dynamics of a flexible, spacecraft-based manipulator

The objective of the study is to develop the equations of motion of a single link, flexible manipulator, attached to an orbiting spacecraft. A payload may be attached to the end-effector of the manipulator. Starting point is d'Alembert's principle, with displacements described by hybrid coordinates. The equations of motion for the two-body...

Towards digital computer simulation of the dynamics of flexible spacecraft

Software design for digital computer simulation of the dynamics of flexible spacecraft equipped with actuators and sensors, should take into account two properties of the overall system: (i) s.ampled-data control of the spacecraft leads to discontinuous inputs (forcing functions) in the differential equations of motion, thereby requiring...

Three-dimensional flight-path reconstruction by means of spline approximation

In NLR TR 82075 U, a method has been developed to reconstruct the flight-path of a symmetric flight, by representing this path by a set of splines. In the present report, the same method is being applied to a three-dimensional flight over a rotating earth. Preliminary results are comparable in accuracy and computing time to the Kalman (Square...