On the lagrangian formalism of nonholonomic mechanical systems

The paper Illustrates the Lagrangian formalism of mechanical systems with nonholonomic constraints using the ideas of geometric mechanics. We first review a Lagrangian system for a conservative mechanical system in the context of variational principle of Hamilton, and we investigate the case that a given Lagrangian is hyperregular, which can be illustrated in the context of the symplectic structure on the tangent bundle of a configuration space by using the Legendre transformation. The Lagrangian system is denoted by the second order vector field and the Lagrangian one- and two-forms associated with a given hyperregular Lagrangian. Then, we demonstrate that a mechanical system with nonholonomic constraints can be formulated on the tangent bundle of a configuration manifold by using Lagrange multipliers. To do this, we investigate the Lagrange-d'Alembert principle from geometric points of view and we also show the intrinsic expression of the Lagrange-d'Alembert equations of motion for nonholonomic mechanical systems with nonconservative force fields.