Dynamics of Elastic Bodies
Under assumptions such as inextensibility and
unshearability, conservative models for elastic bodies typically
result in holonomically constrained Hamiltonian systems.
Following an approach used by
Dichmann and Maddocks
for a Cosserat
rod, spatial discretization takes the form of a collective of rigid body
motions. We solve the resulting equations of motion using semi-explicit
symplectic-reversible integration schemes.
An advantage of our method is that it can efficiently handle the presence
of long range forces, e.g. due to a charge distribution on the bodies.
a preprint
Some elastic rod images from
our openGL animations
An animated gif file using snapshots from
our openGL animations