Physical units problem for a DC Motor with viscous friction

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
3 replies · 3K views
IzitoI
Messages
2
Reaction score
1
Homework Statement
30*10^-6 N*m*s
Relevant Equations
x N*m*s/rad
Hi everyone,

I'm trying to derive DC motor differential equations. I have some doubts:

I have a viscous friction coefficient in terms of N*m*s. Is it possible to express it in terms of N*m*s/rad? And how?

Some exercises show this value in Newton-meter-second and others in Newton-meter-second/rad so I'm a little bit confused.

Thank you :smile:
 
Physics news on Phys.org
A rad is not really a unit but a dimensionless quantity. It is used to express the measure of an angle as the ratio of the length of an arc ##s## on a circle of radius ##r##, that is ##\theta = s/r##. The angular frequency ##\omega## is given by ##\omega=\frac{d\theta}{dt}## and you see it expressed sometimes as rad/s and sometimes as s-1. To answer your question, 1 s/rad = 1 s.; there is no conversion factor.
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: IzitoI and Dr.D
kuruman said:
A rad is not really a unit but a dimensionless quantity. It is used to express the measure of an angle as the ratio of the length of an arc ##s## on a circle of radius ##r##, that is ##\theta = s/r##. The angular frequency ##\omega## is given by ##\omega=\frac{d\theta}{dt}## and you see it expressed sometimes as rad/s and sometimes as s-1. To answer your question, 1 s/rad = 1 s.; there is no conversion factor.
I thought was like that but I wasn't sure. Thank you so much 😉
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: berkeman
IzitoI said:
Hi everyone,

I'm trying to derive DC motor differential equations. I have some doubts:

I have a viscous friction coefficient in terms of N*m*s. Is it possible to express it in terms of N*m*s/rad? And how?

Some exercises show this value in Newton-meter-second and others in Newton-meter-second/rad so I'm a little bit confused.

Thank you :smile:
There seems to be something wrong with one of your units.
For viscous friction coefficient, you can have Ns/m for linear or Nms/rad for rotational.
See e.g. https://lpsa.swarthmore.edu/Systems/MechRotating/RotMechSysElem.html
There is no Nms.

More generally, there have been many attempts to ascribe dimension to rotation, and it can be done, but it turns out to be "imaginary" in the sense that although radian has this new dimension radian2 is dimensionless.