What is Rigid body?

What Does Rigid body Mean

A rigid body is one whose shape does not vary despite being subjected to the action of external forces . This means that the distance between the different particles that make it up is invariable over time.

The rigid body is an ideal model used for kinematics and mechanics studies . However, in practice, all bodies deform, even if minimally, when subjected to the effect of an external force. Therefore, real machines and structures can never be considered absolutely rigid.
Kinematics can be established as a scientific branch, specifically framed within the field of Physics, whose object of study is what the movements of bodies are, without taking into consideration what are the pressures or forces at which they are seen. submitted.

It is also important to highlight the fact that the aforementioned scientific discipline develops its studies and analysis having three fundamental pillars for it. These are none other than time, space and mobile. All this results in later working with what is uniformly accelerated rectilinear movement, simple harmonic movement, rectilinear movement, circular movement or parabolic movement, among others.
Meanwhile, for its part, the aforementioned Mechanics also carries out the study of the movement of bodies but also their rest. Two questions in which it also studies what are the forces that act on them.
The study of pulleys is one of the fundamental fields of work within this scientific branch that we find with the fact that it has several ramifications as well. In this way, there are relativistic quantum mechanics, relativistic mechanics, quantum mechanics, and classical mechanics. The latter is divided into two: statistical mechanics and continuous media mechanics.
Specifically, the last of all those exposed is the one that focuses on studying in depth what acoustics, deformable solids and fluids are.
There are different modes of movement of a rigid body. The translation consists of the movement of the body, so that, at each moment, the particles that form it maintain the same speed and acceleration .
With rotation , the particles move relative to an axis with the same velocity and angular acceleration.
When translation and rotation are combined, the general motion appears , which is studied from the translation and rotation of the center of mass.
Specialists usually study the effect of the forces exerted on the rigid body to determine how a system of forces can be replaced by an equivalent that is simpler. For this, they are based on the assumption that the effect of the force remains unchanged as long as the force moves in its line of action, which means that the forces can be represented by sliding vectors .

Among the fundamental concepts for these studies are the moment of the force with respect to its axis and the moment of the force with respect to a point, which allow different calculations to be made.

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