The equations of motion of a rigid body with constraints explicitly depending on time

Abstract

The general equations of motion of a body for an observer in S0 (an inertial frame) or for an observer in S1 (an accelerated frame) are derived. They allow us to determine, in any case, the inertial and gyroscopic forces and to find the difference between them. If the vector \(\overrightarrow R\) that determines the position of the body in S0 depends explicitly on time in S0, the work-energy principle yields a supplementary condition and these equations can be shown to be equivalent to the Painleve integrals in the Lagrange formulation. Since we are dealing with inertial frames, gyroscopic forces rather than inertial forces are taken into account. If another reference frame is used, we can choose it so that the position vector \(\overrightarrow r\) depends implicitly on time in S1 and another set of equations can be obtained for the motion of the body in S1. The work-energy principle yields a supplementary condition, but inertial forces should be added. Since an explicit time dependence does not exist in S1, gyroscopic forces do not exist as well and instead we have Coriolis forces that behave like gyroscopic forces