20 research outputs found
Chaplygin ball over a fixed sphere: explicit integration
We consider a nonholonomic system describing a rolling of a dynamically
non-symmetric sphere over a fixed sphere without slipping. The system
generalizes the classical nonholonomic Chaplygin sphere problem and it is shown
to be integrable for one special ratio of radii of the spheres. After a time
reparameterization the system becomes a Hamiltonian one and admits a separation
of variables and reduction to Abel--Jacobi quadratures. The separating
variables that we found appear to be a non-trivial generalization of
ellipsoidal (spheroconical) coordinates on the Poisson sphere, which can be
useful in other integrable problems.
Using the quadratures we also perform an explicit integration of the problem
in theta-functions of the new time.Comment: This is an extended version of the paper to be published in Regular
and Chaotic Dynamics, Vol. 13 (2008), No. 6. Contains 20 pages and 2 figure