Displacement measured angle-wise when a body is showing circular or rotational motion
Angular displacement
The angle of rotation from the black ray to the green segment is 60°, from the black ray to the blue segment is 210°, and from the green to the blue segment is 210° − 60° = 150°. A complete rotation about the center point is equal to 1 tr, 360°, or 2πradians.
The angular displacement (symbol θ, ϑ, or φ) – also called angle of rotation, rotational displacement, or rotary displacement – of a physical body is the angle (with the unitradian, degree, turn, etc.) through which the body has rotated (revolved or spun) around a centre or axis of rotation. Angular displacement may be signed, indicating the direction of rotation (e.g., clockwise versus counterclockwise); it may also be greater (in absolute value) than a full turn if the rotation was.
Context
Rotation of a rigid body P about a fixed axis O.
When a body with orientation rotates about an axis, the motion of the orientation must be taken into account, such as how the yaw, pitch and roll of a plane all result in different, new orientations. Each part of the object experiences circular motion as it undergoes the rotation.
The simplest case is that of the rigid body in which the object itself does not change. Precisely, this is when the distances between all the particles remain constant throughout the body's motion, as opposed to it having internally moving parts parts or accumulating or releasing parts of itself. Many real bodies are approximated as rigid bodies, such as airplanes in flight simulations.
Example
In the example illustrated to the left (or above in some mobile versions), a particle or body P is at a fixed distance r from the origin, O, rotating counterclockwise. It becomes important to then represent the position of particle P in terms of its polar coordinates (r, θ). In this particular example, the value of θ is changing, while the value of the radius remains the same. (In rectangular coordinates (x, y) both x and y vary with time.) As the particle moves along the circle, it travels an arc lengths, which becomes related to the angular position through the relationship:
Definition and units
Angular displacement may be expressed with the unit radian or degree. Using the radian provides a very simple relationship between distance traveled around the circle (circular arclength) and the distance r from the centre (radius):
For example, if a body rotates 360° around a circle of radius r, the angular displacement is given by the distance traveled around the circumference - which is 2πr - divided by the radius: which easily simplifies to: . Therefore, 1 revolution is radians.
Figure 1: Euler's rotation theorem. A great circle transforms to another great circle under rotations, leaving always a diameter of the sphere in its original position.Figure 2: A rotation represented by an Euler axis and angle
In three dimensions, angular displacement is an entity with a direction and a magnitude. The direction specifies the axis of rotation, which always exists by virtue of the Euler's rotation theorem; the magnitude specifies the rotation in radians about that axis (using the right-hand rule to determine direction). This entity is called an axis-angle.
Despite having direction and magnitude, angular displacement is not a vector because it does not obey the commutative law for addition.[4] Nevertheless, when dealing with infinitesimal rotations, second order infinitesimals can be discarded and in this case commutativity appears.
Given that any frame in the space can be described by a rotation matrix, the displacement among them can also be described by a rotation matrix. Being and two matrices, the angular displacement matrix between them can be obtained as . When this product is performed having a very small difference between both frames we will obtain a matrix close to the identity.
In the limit, we will have an infinitesimal rotation matrix.
For example, if , representing an infinitesimal three-dimensional rotation about the x-axis, a basis element of , then
and
The computation rules for infinitesimal rotation matrices are the usual ones except that infinitesimals of second order are dropped. With these rules, these matrices do not satisfy all the same properties as ordinary finite rotation matrices under the usual treatment of infinitesimals.[5] It turns out that the order in which infinitesimal rotations are applied is irrelevant.