In mathematics, physics and engineering, a Euclidean vector or simply a vector is a geometric object that has magnitude and direction. Vectors can be added to other vectors according to vector algebra. A Euclidean vector is frequently represented by a ray, or graphically as an arrow connecting an initial pointA with a terminal pointB, and denoted by .
Kinematics is a subfield of physics, developed in classical mechanics, that describes the motion of points, bodies (objects), and systems of bodies without considering the forces that cause them to move. Kinematics, as a field of study, is often referred to as the "geometry of motion" and is occasionally seen as a branch of mathematics. A kinematics problem begins by describing the geometry of the system and declaring the initial conditions of any known values of position, velocity and/or acceleration of points within the system. Then, using arguments from geometry, the position, velocity and acceleration of any unknown parts of the system can be determined. The study of how forces act on bodies falls within kinetics, not kinematics. For further details, see analytical dynamics.
In physics, angular velocity, also known as angular frequency vector, is a vector measure of rotation rate, that refers to how fast an object rotates or revolves relative to another point, i.e. how fast the angular position or orientation of an object changes with time.
In physics, work is the energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement. In its simplest form, it is often represented as the product of force and displacement. A force is said to do positive work if it has a component in the direction of the displacement of the point of application. A force does negative work if it has a component opposite to the direction of the displacement at the point of application of the force.
In theoretical physics and mathematical physics, analytical mechanics, or theoretical mechanics is a collection of closely related alternative formulations of classical mechanics. It was developed by many scientists and mathematicians during the 18th century and onward, after Newtonian mechanics. Since Newtonian mechanics considers vector quantities of motion, particularly accelerations, momenta, forces, of the constituents of the system, an alternative name for the mechanics governed by Newton's laws and Euler's laws is vectorial mechanics.
In analytical mechanics, the term generalized coordinates refers to the parameters that describe the configuration of the system relative to some reference configuration. These parameters must uniquely define the configuration of the system relative to the reference configuration. This is done assuming that this can be done with a single chart. The generalized velocities are the time derivatives of the generalized coordinates of the system.
In the physical science of dynamics, rigid-body dynamics studies the movement of systems of interconnected bodies under the action of external forces. The assumption that the bodies are rigid simplifies analysis, by reducing the parameters that describe the configuration of the system to the translation and rotation of reference frames attached to each body. This excludes bodies that display fluid, highly elastic, and plastic behavior.
D'Alembert's principle, also known as the Lagrange–d'Alembert principle, is a statement of the fundamental classical laws of motion. It is named after its discoverer, the French physicist and mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert. It is an extension of the principle of virtual work from static to dynamical systems. d'Alembert separates the total forces acting on a system to forces of inertia and impressed. Although d'Alembert's principle is formulated in many different ways, in essence it means that any system of forces is in equilibrium if impressed forces are added to the inertial forces. The principle does not apply for irreversible displacements, such as sliding friction, and more general specification of the irreversibility is required. D'Alembert's principle is more general than Hamilton's principle as it is not restricted to holonomic constraints that depend only on coordinates and time but not on velocities.
A nonholonomic system in physics and mathematics is a physical system whose state depends on the path taken in order to achieve it. Such a system is described by a set of parameters subject to differential constraints, such that when the system evolves along a path in its parameter space but finally returns to the original set of parameter values at the start of the path, the system itself may not have returned to its original state.
In mechanics, virtual work arises in the application of the principle of least action to the study of forces and movement of a mechanical system. The work of a force acting on a particle as it moves along a displacement is different for different displacements. Among all the possible displacements that a particle may follow, called virtual displacements, one will minimize the action. This displacement is therefore the displacement followed by the particle according to the principle of least action. The work of a force on a particle along a virtual displacement is known as the virtual work.
Screw theory is the algebraic calculation of pairs of vectors, such as forces and moments or angular and linear velocity, that arise in the kinematics and dynamics of rigid bodies. The mathematical framework was developed by Sir Robert Stawell Ball in 1876 for application in kinematics and statics of mechanisms.
In geometry, various formalisms exist to express a rotation in three dimensions as a mathematical transformation. In physics, this concept is applied to classical mechanics where rotational kinematics is the science of quantitative description of a purely rotational motion. The orientation of an object at a given instant is described with the same tools, as it is defined as an imaginary rotation from a reference placement in space, rather than an actually observed rotation from a previous placement in space.
A mechanical system is scleronomous if the equations of constraints do not contain the time as an explicit variable and the equation of constraints can be described by generalized coordinates. Such constraints are called scleronomic constraints. The opposite of scleronomous is rheonomous.
Multibody system is the study of the dynamic behavior of interconnected rigid or flexible bodies, each of which may undergo large translational and rotational displacements.
In computational chemistry, a constraint algorithm is a method for satisfying the Newtonian motion of a rigid body which consists of mass points. A restraint algorithm is used to ensure that the distance between mass points is maintained. The general steps involved are: (i) choose novel unconstrained coordinates, (ii) introduce explicit constraint forces, (iii) minimize constraint forces implicitly by the technique of Lagrange multipliers or projection methods.
In classical mechanics, holonomic constraints are relations between the position variables that can be expressed in the following form:
In classical mechanics, Appell's equation of motion is an alternative general formulation of classical mechanics described by Josiah Willard Gibbs in 1879 and Paul Émile Appell in 1900.
In linear algebra, eigendecomposition or sometimes spectral decomposition is the factorization of a matrix into a canonical form, whereby the matrix is represented in terms of its eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Only diagonalizable matrices can be factorized in this way.
In theoretical physics, the Udwadia–Kalaba equation is a method for deriving the equations of motion of a constrained mechanical system. The equation was first described by Firdaus E. Udwadia and Robert E. Kalaba in 1992. The approach is based on Gauss's principle of least constraint. The Udwadia–Kalaba equation applies to both holonomic constraints and nonholonomic constraints, as long as they are linear with respect to the accelerations. The equation generalizes to constraint forces that do not obey D'Alembert's principle.
Lagrangian mechanics is a reformulation of classical mechanics, introduced by the Italian-French mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1788.
