Computational Rigid Vehicle Dynamics

Booknews

A series of lecture notes presented as an introduction to the computer simulation of rigid aerospace vehicles addressing the area between purely mathematical and engineering texts. The volume covers the kinematics of rigid objects including rotation matrices, quaternions, and Euler angles, then adds the dynamics with topics in the tensor of inertia, the angular momentum, and rotational dynamic equations in earth axes, and concludes by putting all the elements together in an airplane simulation, tested by "flying" the full six degree of freedom simulation in the computer. Includes a disk with computer code, graphs, tables, equations, and selected problems and answers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.