Analytic solution of the large angle problem in rigid body attitude dynamics.pdfVIP

Analytic Solution of the Large Angle Problem in Rigid Body Attitude Dynamics James M Longuskiand Panagiotis Tsiotrasy The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences
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  Abstract The development of analytic solutions for the forced attitude motion of a rigid body is a formidable task because of the appearance of nonlinear dierential kinematic equations when the problem is represented in terms of Eulerian angles
On the other hand when the problem is cast into the quaternion formulation the resulting timevaryingmatrix renders the linear dierential equations just as intractable for large ranges of the time variable
In this paper a new kinematic formulation is introduced which characterizes the problem as a single complex Riccati equation with timevarying coecients
In this form the highest order nonlinear terms are quadratic in contrast to the nonlinear trigonometric terms of the Eulerian angles
When the quadratic terms are dropped the new kinematic equations correspond directly to the linearized small angle Eulerian formulation
The quadratic kinematic equations are ideal for analytic solutions because an approximate analytic integration of the quadratic terms which characterize the large angle motion can be achieved to a high degree of accuracy
The solutions are derived through asymptotic and series expansions and are based entirely on integrals found previously in the small angle theory
The numerical simulations demonstrate that spin axis excursions in excess of  radian can be accurately represented by the new analytic solutions
Introduction In the last several decades there has been a great deal of activity in the development of analytic solutions for attitude motion of a rigid body in more and more sophisticated prob lems
 The earliest works eg Poinsot
 address the motion of the unforced rigid body and due to the availability of integrals of the motion namely energy and momentum provide exact compac