SOME PROBLEMS ABOUT THE MOTION OF A RIGID BODY IN A RESISTIVE MEDIUM

The dynamics of rotating rigid bodies is a classical topic of study in mechanics. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, several aspects of a rotating rigid body motion were studied by famous mathematicians as Euler, Jacobi, Poinsot, Lagrange, and Kovalevskya. However, the study of the dynamics of rotating bodies of still important for aplications such as the dynamics of satellite-gyrostat, spacecraft, re-entry vehicles, theory of gyroscopes, modern technology, navigation, space engineering and many other areas. A number of studies are devoted to the dynamics of a rigid body in a resistive medium. The presence of the velocity of proper rotation of the rigid body leads to the apearance of dissipative torques causing the braking of the body rotation. These torques depend on the properties of resistant medium in which the rigid body motions occur, on the body shape, on the properties of the surface of the rigid body and the distribution of mass in the body and on the characters of the rigid body motion. Therefore, the dependence of the resistant torque on the orientation of the rigid body and its angular velocity can de quite complicated and requires consideration of the motion of the medium around the body in the general case. We confine ourselves in this paper to some simple relations that can qualitative describe the resistance to rigid body rotation at small angular velocities and are used in the literature. In setting up the equations of motion of a rigid body moving in viscous medium, we need to consider the nature of the resisting force generated by the motion of the rigid body. The evolution of rotations of a rigid body influenced by dissipative disturbing torques were studied in many papers and books. The problems of motion of a rigid body about fixed point in a resistive medium described by nonlinear dynamic Euler equations. An analytical solution of the problem when the torques of external resistance forces are proportional to the corresponding projections of the angular velocity of the rigid body is obtain in several works. The dependence of the dissipative torque of the resistant forces on the angular velocity vector of rotation of the rigid body is assumed to be linear. We consider dynamics of a rigid body with arbitrary moments of inertia subjected to external torques include small dissipative torques.