Mechanical Design for the Stage

7

Basic Concepts of Rotational Motion

Definition of Rotational Motion

Rotating machine parts are everywhere: the shaft on an electric motor, a gear inside a reducer, or a winch drum and shaft on its bearings, are all common examples. A wide variety of rotating scenery is less obvious beyond the turntables that might first come to mind, but pivoting panels, doors, periaktoi, and jack-knife stages for instance all turn about a single stationary axis of rotation. As was true in the linear motion section, the complexity of the mathematics describing rotation can be considerably reduced by a number of assumptions. In the following chapters, rotation will be assumed to involve only rigid solid materials traveling in a simple circular motion around ...