In aircraft design, the moment of inertia (I) is a crucial physical property used to describe the distribution of mass within an object or system. It quantifies how an object’s mass is distributed relative to a particular axis of rotation. The moment of inertia is commonly used in engineering and physics to analyze the rotational behavior of objects.
The formula to calculate the moment of inertia for a simple object like a rigid body rotating around a fixed axis is:
- I represents the moment of inertia.
- Σ (sigma) denotes a summation, indicating that you sum up the contributions from all individual components.mi represents the mass of each individual component.
- ri represents the perpendicular distance from the axis of rotation to each component.