Dario Zlatar

An Angular Momentum and Energy Conserving Lie-Group Integration Scheme for Rigid Body Rotational Dynamics Originating From Störmer–Verlet Algorithm

The paper presents two novel second order conservative Lie-group geometric methods for integration of rigid body rotational dynamics. First proposed algorithm is a fully explicit scheme that exactly conserves spatial angular momentum of a free spinning body. The method is inspired by the Stormer–Verlet integration algorithm for solving ordinary differential equations (ODEs), which is also momentum conservative when dealing with ODEs in linear spaces but loses its conservative properties in a nonlinear regime, such as nonlinear SO(3) rotational group. Then, we proposed an algorithm that is an implicit integration scheme with a direct update in SO(3). The method is algorithmically designed to conserve exactly both of the two “main” motion integrals of a rotational rigid body, i.e., spatial angular momentum of a torque-free body as well as its kinetic energy. As it is shown in the paper, both methods also preserve Lagrangian top integrals of motion in a very good manner, and generally better than some of the most successful conservative schemes to which the proposed methods were compared within the presented numerical examples. The proposed schemes can be easily applied within the integration algorithms of the dynamics of general rigid body systems.

Lie Group Forward Dynamics of Fixed-Wing Aircraft With Singularity-Free Attitude Reconstruction on SO(3)

This paper proposes an approach to formulation and integration of the governing equations for aircraft flight simulation that is based on a Lie group setting, and leads to a nonsingular coordinate-free numerical integration. Dynamical model of an aircraft is formulated in Lie group state space form and integrated by ordinary-differential-equation (ODE)-on-Lie groups Munthe-Kaas (MK) type of integrator. By following such an approach, it is assured that kinematic singularities, which are unavoidable if a three-angles-based rotation parameterization is applied for the whole 3D rotation domain, do not occur in the proposed noncoordinate formulation form. Moreover, in contrast to the quaternion rotation parameterization that imposes additional algebraic constraint and leads to integration of differential-algebraic equations (DAEs) (with necessary algebraic-equation-violation stabilization step), the proposed formulation leads to a nonredundant ODE integration in minimal form. To this end, this approach combines benefits of both traditional approaches to aircraft simulation (i.e., three angles parameterization and quaternions), while at the same time it avoids related drawbacks of the classical models. Besides solving kinematic singularity problem without introducing DAEs, the proposed formulation also exhibits numerical advantages in terms of better accuracy when longer integration steps are applied during simulation and when aircraft motion pattern comprises steady rotational component of its 3D motion. This is due to the fact that a Lie group setting and applied MK integrator determine vehicle orientation on the basis of integration of local (tangent, nonlinear) kinematical differential equations (KDEs) that model process of 3D rotations (i.e., vehicle attitude reconstruction on nonlinear manifold SO(3)) more accurately than “global” KDEs of the classical formulations (that are linear in differential equations part in the case of standard quaternion models).

Redundancy-Free Integration of Rotational Quaternions in Minimal Form

Redundancy-free computational procedure for solving dynamics of rigid body by using quaternions as the rotational kinematic parameters will be presented in the paper. On the contrary to the standard algorithm that is based on redundant DAE-formulation of rotational dynamics of rigid body that includes algebraic equation of quaternions’ unit-length that has to be solved during marching-in-time, the proposed method will be based on the integration of a local rotational vector in the minimal form at the Lie-algebra level of the SO(3) rotational group during every integration step. After local rotational vector for the current step is determined by using standard (possibly higher-order) integration ODE routine, the rotational integration point is projected to Sp(1) quaternion-group via pertinent exponential map. The result of the procedure is redundancy-free integration algorithm for rigid body rotational motion based on the rotational quaternions that allows for straightforward minimal-form-ODE integration of the rotational dynamics.© 2014 ASME

Numerical flight vehicle forward dynamics with state-space lie-group integration scheme

Dynamic simulation procedures of flight vehicle maneuvers need robust and efficient integration methods in order to allow for reliable simulation missions. Derivation of such integration schemes in Lie-group settings is especially efficient since the coordinate-free Lie-group dynamical models operate directly on SO(3) rotational matrices and angular velocities, avoiding local rotation parameters and artificial algebraic constraints as well as kinematical differential equations. In the adopted modeling approach, a state-space of the flight vehicle (modeled as a multi-body system comprising rigid bodies) is modeled as a Lie-group. The numerical algorithm is demonstrated and tested within the framework of the characteristic case study of the aircraft 3D maneuver.Copyright

Störmer-Verlet Integration Scheme for Multibody System Dynamics in Lie-Group Setting

Stormer-Verlet integration scheme has many attractive properties when dealing with ODE systems in linear spaces: it is explicit, 2nd order, linear/angular momentum preserving and it is symplectic for Hamiltonian systems. In this paper we investigate its application for numerical simulation of the multibody system dynamics (MBS) by formulating StormerVerlet algorithm for the constrained mechanical systems with the direct rotation group SO(3) upgrade in Lie-group setting. Starting from the investigations on the single rigid body rotational dynamics, the paper introduces modified RATTLE integration scheme with the SO(3) rotational upgrade that is designed via exponential map and utilization of the rotation group Lie-algebra so(3), which is determined from the canonical coordinate of Hamiltonian system during integration of the system dynamics. CONFIGURATION SPACE AND BASIC FORMULATION In the adopted approach, the configuration space of MBS comprising k bodies is modeled as a Lie-group

Geometric Mathematical Framework for Multibody System Dynamics

The paper surveys geometric mathematical framework for computational modeling of multibody system dynamics. Starting with the configuration space of rigid body motion and analysis of it’s Lie group structure, the elements of respective Lie algebra are addressed and basic relations pertinent to geometrical formulations of multibody system dynamics are surveyed. Dynamical model of multibody system on manifold introduced, along with the outline of geometric characteristics of holonomic and non‐holonomic kinematical constraints.