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Moment of Inertia of a Rigid Body

By - Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com

Consider the rotation of a rigid body. What is a rigid body? For any rigid body, the relative positions of the particles of it remain fixed: ( ) = const., where , s are the position vectors of the th and th particles with respect to some fixed coordinate system. Here we have considered a system of particles having 1, 2, 3,.N particles of masses , , ,. respectively. What is a rotation?

Eulers Theorem: In any kind of motion, where one point in the rigid body is fixed, it must be rotation. Motion = Translation + Rotation For a system of particles, total angular momentum is the sum of angular momenta of all the particles: = = = =
( ) (

=
(

[The body is rotating with angular velocity, ] ) ( ) ( )]

[Using the relation, (

Now we can find out the x-component to be the following:

Similarly, the y- and z-components can be separated out. For the coefficients of , and we write, , and , and and that of in terms of ,

Similarly, we can write the components of in terms of and so that we have the following relations:

This lecture Note series on Classical Mechanics is for 1st year undergraduate students in Physics.

Compiled by Dr. Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com

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Where , , are the Moments of Inertia of the body about x, y and z-axes respectively. , , are the Products of Inertia. For example, is the product which is defined with respect to the xz and yz planes, that means in the expression of the distances ( and ) of a point particle inside the body are measured w.r.t the xz-plane and yz-plane and then the product is calculated. Now, we have got the following expressions for the Moments and Products of Inertia: So, we see that the products of Inertia share symmetric relations among them. Now we can think of a Matrix containing the moments and products of inertia:

Now is called the Inertia Tensor, the matrix is a symmetric matrix with six independent components. Thus the angular momentum components can be written in a short form: . , where and

Calculation of Kinetic Energy:

= = = = = = [ as ( =
) ( )]

=
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This lecture Note series on Classical Mechanics is for 1st year undergraduate students in Physics.

Compiled by Dr. Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com

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In terms of components we can write,

= +

+ , + and ] (1)

If the body is rotating around x-axis, So,

Now if only the diagonal terms in the Moment of Inertia Tensor exist, we can write
( ) so that the Kinetic Energy now becomes

].

The axes for which the products of Inertia (off diagonal terms of the Inertia Tensor) are zero, are called principal axes of inertia. Note: An important property of principal axis is that if the rigid body rotates around it the direction of the angular momentum is the same as that of the angular velocity: = .

Ellipsoid of Inertia:
From the expression (1) we can write, + Or, ( (

+ ) + (

+ ) + (

+ (

]=1

)(

)+

)(

)+

)( +

) =1 + + + = 1, where

The above expression is called the ellipsoid of inertia. In terms of direction cosines, the expression for Kinetic Energy is written as

cos 2 +
cos cos ] 2 ,

cos 2 +

cos 2

cos cos +

cos cos +

j where (i cos cos k cos ) .

This lecture Note series on Classical Mechanics is for 1st year undergraduate students in Physics.

Compiled by Dr. Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com

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On the relations between the Principal Moments of Inertia

The Moments of Inertia of a rigid body around the three principal axes are the following: ( ), ( ), (

j ), where ri i x y kz is the position

) . [ ri2 xi2 yi2 zi2 ]

vector of a mass point So, = 2

of the body. ( ( ..(1) ) ( ) (

) = 2

The above formula is true in general, whether the body is 2D or 3D, does not matter. But in 2D, say in XY-plane, we have all zi s are zero. So, ( ), ( ), .

Also, ri 2 xi2 yi2 . Thus, ( ) ( ) = 2 =2

, Perpendicular axes theorem as special case of theorem (1) in 2D.

This lecture Note series on Classical Mechanics is for 1st year undergraduate students in Physics.

Compiled by Dr. Abhijit Kar Gupta, kg.abhi@gmail.com

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