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Converted document PRINCIPAL AXES APPLICATIONS

PRINCIPAL AXES 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.
The principal axes of a body is used to find the principal moments of inertia, which are especially helpful with rotating bodies making calculations of, for instance, momentum, velocity, or kinetic energy much simpler with less terms of the inertia matrix.