Screw Theory - Work of Forces Acting On A Rigid Body

Work of Forces Acting On A Rigid Body

Consider the set of forces F1, F2 ... Fn act on the points X1, X2 ... Xn in a rigid body. The trajectories of Xi, i=1,...,n are defined by the movement of the rigid body with rotation and the translation d(t) of a reference point in the body, given by

where xi are coordinates in the moving body.

The velocity of each point Xi is

where ω is the angular velocity vector and v is the derivative of d(t).

The work by the forces over the displacement δri=viδt of each point is given by

Define the velocities of each point in terms of the twist of the moving body to obtain

Expand this equation and collect coefficients of ω and v to obtain

Introduce the twist of the moving body and the wrench acting on it given by

then work takes the form

The 6x6 matrix is used to simply the calculation of work using screws, so that

where

and is the 3x3 identity matrix.

Read more about this topic:  Screw Theory

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