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Support Polygon
For a rigid object in contact with a fixed environment and acted upon by gravity in the vertical direction, its support polygon is a horizontal region over which the center of mass must lie to achieve static stability. For example, for an object resting on a horizontal surface (e.g. a table), the support polygon is the convex hull of its "footprint" on the table. The support polygon succinctly represents the conditions necessary for an object to be at equilibrium under gravity. That is, if the object's center of mass lies over the support polygon, then there exist a set of forces over the region of contact that exactly counteracts the forces of gravity. Note that this is a ''necessary'' condition for stability, but ''not a sufficient'' one. Derivation Let the object be in contact at a finite number of points C_1,\ldots,C_N. At each point C_k, let FC_k be the set of forces that can be applied on the object at that point. Here, FC_k is known as the ''friction cone'', and for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convex Hull
In geometry, the convex hull or convex envelope or convex closure of a shape is the smallest convex set that contains it. The convex hull may be defined either as the intersection of all convex sets containing a given subset of a Euclidean space, or equivalently as the set of all convex combinations of points in the subset. For a bounded subset of the plane, the convex hull may be visualized as the shape enclosed by a rubber band stretched around the subset. Convex hulls of open sets are open, and convex hulls of compact sets are compact. Every compact convex set is the convex hull of its extreme points. The convex hull operator is an example of a closure operator, and every antimatroid can be represented by applying this closure operator to finite sets of points. The algorithmic problems of finding the convex hull of a finite set of points in the plane or other low-dimensional Euclidean spaces, and its dual problem of intersecting half-spaces, are fundamental problems of com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friction
Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction: *Dry friction is a force that opposes the relative lateral motion of two solid surfaces in contact. Dry friction is subdivided into ''static friction'' ("stiction") between non-moving surfaces, and ''kinetic friction'' between moving surfaces. With the exception of atomic or molecular friction, dry friction generally arises from the interaction of surface features, known as asperities (see Figure 1). *Fluid friction describes the friction between layers of a viscous fluid that are moving relative to each other. *Lubricated friction is a case of fluid friction where a lubricant fluid separates two solid surfaces. *Skin friction is a component of drag, the force resisting the motion of a fluid across the surface of a body. *Internal friction is the force resisting motion between the elements making up a so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convex Cone
In linear algebra, a ''cone''—sometimes called a linear cone for distinguishing it from other sorts of cones—is a subset of a vector space that is closed under scalar multiplication; that is, is a cone if x\in C implies sx\in C for every . When the scalars are real numbers, or belong to an ordered field, one generally calls a cone a subset of a vector space that is closed under multiplication by a ''positive scalar''. In this context, a convex cone is a cone that is closed under addition, or, equivalently, a subset of a vector space that is closed under linear combinations with positive coefficients. It follows that convex cones are convex sets. In this article, only the case of scalars in an ordered field is considered. Definition A subset ''C'' of a vector space ''V'' over an ordered field ''F'' is a cone (or sometimes called a linear cone) if for each ''x'' in ''C'' and positive scalar ''α'' in ''F'', the product ''αx'' is in ''C''. Note that some authors define co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
