6,807 research outputs found
Stability Analysis of a Rigid Body with Attached Geometrically Nonlinear Rod by the Energy-Momentum Method
This paper applies the energy-momentum method to the problem of nonlinear stability of relative equilibria of a rigid body with attached flexible appendage in a uniformly rotating state. The appendage is modeled as a geometrically exact rod which allows for finite bending, shearing and twist in three dimensions. Application of the energy-momentum method to this example depends crucially on a
special choice of variables in terms of which the second variation block diagonalizes into blocks associated with rigid body modes and internal vibration modes respectively. The analysis yields a nonlinear stability result which states that relative equilibria are nonlinearly stable provided that; (i) the angular velocity is bounded above by the square root of the minimum eigenvalue of an associated
linear operator and, (ii) the whole assemblage is rotating about the minimum axis of inertia
Magnetic fields and differential rotation on the pre-main sequence
Maps of magnetic field topologies of rapidly rotating stars obtained over the last decade or so have provided unique insight into the operation of stellar dynamos. However, for solar-type stars many of the targets imaged to date have been lower-mass zero-age main sequence stars. We present magnetic maps and differential rotation measurements of two-higher mass pre-main sequence stars HD 106506 (~10 Myrs) and HD 141943 (~15 Myrs). These stars should evolve into mid/late F-stars with predicted high differential rotation and little magnetic activity. We investigate what effect the extended convection zones of these pre-main sequence stars has on their differential rotation and magnetic topologies. ©2009 American Institute of Physic
Frictional Collisions Off Sharp Objects
This work develops robust contact algorithms capable of dealing with multibody nonsmooth contact
geometries for which neither normals nor gap functions can be defined. Such situations arise
in the early stage of fragmentation when a number of angular fragments undergo complex collision
sequences before eventually scattering. Such situations precludes the application of most contact
algorithms proposed to date
Physical Dissipation and the Method of Controlled Lagrangians
We describe the effect of physical dissipation on stability of
equilibria which have been stabilized, in the absence of damping,
using the method of controlled Lagrangians. This method
applies to a class of underactuated mechanical systems including
âbalanceâ systems such as the pendulum on a cart. Since
the method involves modifying a systemâs kinetic energy metric
through feedback, the effect of dissipation is obscured.
In particular, it is not generally true that damping makes a
feedback-stabilized equilibrium asymptotically stable. Damping
in the unactuated directions does tend to enhance stability,
however damping in the controlled directions must be âreversedâ
through feedback. In this paper, we suggest a choice
of feedback dissipation to locally exponentially stabilize a class
of controlled Lagrangian systems
Dissipation and Controlled Euler-Poincaré Systems
The method of controlled Lagrangians is a technique for stabilizing underactuated mechanical systems which involves modifying a systemâs energy and dynamic structure through feedback. These modifications can obscure the effect of physical dissipation in the closed-loop. For example,
generic damping can destabilize an equilibrium which is closed-loop stable for a conservative system model. In this paper, we consider the effect of damping on Euler-Poincaré (special reduced Lagrangian) systems which have been stabilized about an equilibrium using the method of controlled Lagrangians. We describe a choice of feed-back dissipation which asymptotically stabilizes a sub-class of controlled Euler-Poincaré systems subject to physical damping. As an example, we consider intermediate axis rotation of a damped rigid body with a single internal rotor
A block diagonalization theorem in the energy-momentum method
We prove a geometric generalization of a block diagonalization theorem first found by the authors for
rotating elastic rods. The result here is given in the general context of simple mechanical systems with a
symmetry group acting by isometries on a configuration manifold. The result provides a choice of
variables for linearized dynamics at a relative equilibrium which block diagonalizes the second variation of
an augmented energy these variables effectively separate the rotational and internal vibrational modes. The
second variation of the effective Hamiltonian is block diagonal. separating the modes completely. while the
symplectic form has an off diagonal term which represents the dynamic interaction between these modes.
Otherwise, the symplectic form is in a type of normal form. The result sets the stage for the development
of useful criteria for bifurcation as well as the stability criteria found here. In addition, the techniques
should apply to other systems as well, such as rotating fluid masses
Discrete Routh Reduction
This paper develops the theory of abelian Routh reduction for discrete
mechanical systems and applies it to the variational integration of mechanical
systems with abelian symmetry. The reduction of variational Runge-Kutta
discretizations is considered, as well as the extent to which symmetry
reduction and discretization commute. These reduced methods allow the direct
simulation of dynamical features such as relative equilibria and relative
periodic orbits that can be obscured or difficult to identify in the unreduced
dynamics. The methods are demonstrated for the dynamics of an Earth orbiting
satellite with a non-spherical correction, as well as the double
spherical pendulum. The problem is interesting because in the unreduced
picture, geometric phases inherent in the model and those due to numerical
discretization can be hard to distinguish, but this issue does not appear in
the reduced algorithm, where one can directly observe interesting dynamical
structures in the reduced phase space (the cotangent bundle of shape space), in
which the geometric phases have been removed. The main feature of the double
spherical pendulum example is that it has a nontrivial magnetic term in its
reduced symplectic form. Our method is still efficient as it can directly
handle the essential non-canonical nature of the symplectic structure. In
contrast, a traditional symplectic method for canonical systems could require
repeated coordinate changes if one is evoking Darboux' theorem to transform the
symplectic structure into canonical form, thereby incurring additional
computational cost. Our method allows one to design reduced symplectic
integrators in a natural way, despite the noncanonical nature of the symplectic
structure.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, numerous minor improvements, references added,
fixed typo
Differential rotation of Kepler-71 via transit photometry mapping of faculae and starspots
Knowledge of dynamo evolution in solar-type stars is limited by the difficulty of using active region monitoring to measure stellar differential rotation, a key probe of stellar dynamo physics. This paper addresses the problem by presenting the first ever measurement of stellar differential rotation for a main-sequence solar-type star using starspots and faculae to provide complementary information. Our analysis uses modelling of light curves of multiple exoplanet transits for the young solar-type star Kepler-71, utilizing archival data from the Kepler mission. We estimate the physical characteristics of starspots and faculae on Kepler-71 from the characteristic amplitude variations they produce in the transit light curves and measure differential rotation from derived longitudes. Despite the higher contrast of faculae than those in the Sun, the bright features on Kepler-71 have similar properties such as increasing contrast towards the limb and larger sizes than sunspots. Adopting a solar-type differential rotation profile (faster rotation at the equator than the poles), the results from both starspot and facula analysis indicate a rotational shear less than about 0.005 rad d-1, or a relative differential rotation less than 2 per cent, and hence almost rigid rotation. This rotational shear contrasts with the strong rotational shear of zero-age main-sequence stars and the modest but significant shear of the modern-day Sun. Various explanations for the likely rigid rotation are considered
Derivation of reduced two-dimensional fluid models via Dirac's theory of constrained Hamiltonian systems
We present a Hamiltonian derivation of a class of reduced plasma
two-dimensional fluid models, an example being the Charney-Hasegawa-Mima
equation. These models are obtained from the same parent Hamiltonian model,
which consists of the ion momentum equation coupled to the continuity equation,
by imposing dynamical constraints. It is shown that the Poisson bracket
associated with these reduced models is the Dirac bracket obtained from the
Poisson bracket of the parent model
Model reduction for analysis of cascading failures in power systems
In this paper, we apply a principal-orthogonal decomposition based method to the model reduction of a hybrid, nonlinear model of a power network. The results demonstrate that the sequence of fault events can be evaluated and predicted without necessarily simulating the whole system
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