Polar Inertia
Introduction
The moment of inertia (symbol I) is a measure of the rotational inertia of a body.[1] When a body rotates around one of the principal axes of inertia, the rotational inertia can be represented as a vector quantity called the moment of inertia. However, in the most general case possible, rotational inertia must be represented by a set of moments of inertia and components that form the so-called inertia tensor. The tensor description is necessary for the analysis of complex systems, for example in gyroscopic movements.
The moment of inertia reflects the mass distribution of an object or a system of rotating particles, with respect to an axis of rotation. The moment of inertia only depends on the geometry of the body and the position of the axis of rotation; but it does not depend on the forces involved in the movement.
The moment of inertia plays a role analogous to that of the inertial mass in the case of rectilinear and uniform motion. It is the scalar value of the longitudinal angular momentum of a rigid solid.
When a body is free to rotate about an axis, a torque must be applied to change its kinetic moment. The amount of torque required to cause a given angular acceleration (the rate of change in angular velocity) is proportional to the moment of inertia of the body. Moments of inertia can be expressed in units of kilogram per square meter (kg·m) in SI units or in pound-foot-seconds squared (lbf·ft·s) in imperial or US customary units.
The moment of inertia plays the role in rotational kinetics that mass (inertia) plays in linear kinetics; both characterize the resistance of a body to changes in its motion. The moment of inertia depends on how the mass is distributed around an axis of rotation and will vary depending on the axis chosen. For a point mass, the moment of inertia about some axis is given by , where is the distance of the point from the axis, and is the mass. For an extended rigid body, the moment of inertia is simply the sum of all the small pieces of mass multiplied by the square of their distances from the axis of rotation. For an extended body of regular shape and uniform density, this sum sometimes produces a simple expression that depends on the dimensions, shape, and total mass of the object.
In 1673 Christiaan Huygens introduced this parameter in his study of the oscillation of a body hanging from a pivot, known as a compound pendulum.[2] The term moment of inertia ("momentum inertiae" in Latin) was introduced by Leonhard Euler in his book in 1765,[2][3] and is incorporated into the second Euler's law.