Please view the posters presented at the 19th Annual City Tech Faculty and Student Research Poster Session below. You can click on each poster to enlarge it and view the PDF version under the poster abstract.
We thank all presenters for sharing their innovative and informative research with the City Tech community and beyond!
40-Simulating the Motion of a Rotating Asymmetric Object
The rotational motion of an asymmetric object that is not subject to an external torque shows interesting features when the object has an initial angular velocity that is almost parallel to the principal axis that corresponds to the intermediate moment of inertia. In that case, the frame of reference formed by the principal axes flips periodically in the laboratory frame in a surprising way. This behavior is sometimes referred to as the Dzhanibekov effect. The purpose of this paper is to show how a numerical solution of Euler’s equations for a spinning asymmetric object allows one to obtain in a simple way the position of the object’s principal axes at each instant in time and to visualize the motion of the rotating object in the laboratory frame. With the procedure outlined in this work it becomes straightforward to write a code that produces an animation of the motion of the rotating object. This exercise could allow students to apply several numerical techniques to a simple but non-trivial problem. View or download a PDF version of this poster.
