Computation of Rigid-Body Rotation in Three-Dimensional Space From Body-Fixed Linear Acceleration Measurements

Abstract

The angular acceleration of a rigid body with respect to a body-fixed (moving) frame can be reliably computed from nine acceleration field measurements. Noncommutativity of finite rotations causes computational problems during numerical integration to obtain the transformation matrix, especially when the rotation is three-dimensional and there are errors in the measured linear accelerations. A method based on the orientation vector concept is formulated and tested against hypothetical data. The rigid-body rotations computed from linear accelerometer data from impact acceleration tests are compared against those obtained from three-dimensional analysis of high speed movie films.