TABLE OF CONTENTS Computer modeling of flight dynamics makes extensive use of matrices. You should already be familiar with the basic concepts of matrix algebra. To refresh your memory, the essential facts are summarized here. For practice you can do the exercises at the end of this section.
An m n matrix is a rectangular array of m n elements arranged in m rows and n columns. For m = 3 and n = 4 we have the 3 4 matrix
In general, the subscript notation defines an m n matrix as
The determinant A of a matrix [ A] is a scalar, obtained from the determinants of the minors M ij of the matrix [ A]:
The transpose [ B] of a matrix [ A] is obtained by swapping out the rows and columns [ B] = [ A]; b ij = a ji. A vector is always portrayed as a column matrix. For a 3 1 vector
The null matrix consists of zero element [0]; 0 ij = 0; for all i and j. The square matrix has the same number of rows and columns
A matrix is symmetric if it equals its transposed
A matrix is skew symmetric if it equals its negative transposed
The skew-symmetric 3 3 matrix is
The off-diagonal elements of a diagonal matrix...
