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Article: Matching moments of inertia.
- Article from:
- Control Engineering
- Article date:
- December 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Reed Business Information, Inc. (US). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Charlie Masi
Actuators have to develop forces to overcome both dissipative forces (friction) and inertial forces. That is, to move anything from position A to position B, you have to first apply force to accelerate the thing from a state of rest to some state of motion, then apply (usually smaller) force to maintain it in the accelerated-motion state against friction, and finally apply a force to decelerate it back to rest.
Moment of inertia is the rotational equivalent of mass. Just as mass quantifies an object's tendency to resist changes in its translational velocity, moment of inertia quantifies its resistance to changes in rotational speed. The ...