Conserved quantities and Hamiltonization of nonholonomic systems

Abstract

This paper studies hamiltonization of nonholonomic systems using geometric tools. By making use of symmetries and suitable first integrals of the system, we explicitly define a global 2-form for which the gauge transformed nonholonomic bracket gives rise to a new bracket on the reduced space codifying the nonholonomic dynamics and carrying an almost symplectic foliation (determined by the common level sets of the first integrals). In appropriate coordinates, this 2-form is shown to agree with the one previously introduced locally in [34]. We use our coordinate-free viewpoint to study various geometric features of the reduced brackets. We apply our formulas to obtain a new geometric proof of the hamiltonization of a homogeneous ball rolling without sliding in the interior side of a convex surface of revolution using our formulas.