GENERALIZED COORDINATES APPLICATIONS

The concepts of rigid body or particle dynamics are used in engineering when motion is involved. This can be motion of a fluid element, a controller such as a flap or landing gear mechanism, and trajectories of vehicles.

It is important that the principles of dynamics are well understood by engineers. An engineering problem can be thought of as a word problem, similar to word problems solved in mathematics. Dynamics provides the basics by which the equations of motions that govern the problem can be derived and applied.

Generalized coordinates are used in deriving equations of motion, and so the applications are very broad. Generalized coordinates can be applied to any dynamic system.