Gyro Systems

Abstract

Just as in the case of a single rigid body, two types of equations of motion can be distinguished for the case of gyro systems, i.e. when we have a system of several rigid bodies that are coupled to each other. These two types can be respectively described as Lagrangian and Eulerian. Energy expressions are used as the starting point for formulating equations of the first type, while equations of the Eulerian type are generally derived by applying the theorem of angular momentum to the component bodies of the system and then, by transformation, to the overall system. Without entering into the details of the theory, we shall here limit ourselves to discussing a few important propositions and results.