Productivity tools to study constrained motion: electrician's approach to mechanician's problem

TL;DR

This paper presents a design framework and tools for physics students to develop solvers for constrained mechanical systems, introducing a 'chainlist' concept and providing code samples and linear algebra review.

Contribution

It introduces the 'chainlist' concept for modeling constrained systems and offers practical design tools and code examples for solver development.

Findings

The 'chainlist' effectively captures system configurations.

Code samples facilitate solver implementation.

Linear algebra review supports constrained motion computations.

Abstract

An application design is offered, which students of physics can use when authoring a solver for mechanical systems with constraints. A 'chainlist' concept is introduced to capture a constrained mechanical system configuration and to pass the simulation scenario to the solver application. Code samples are given to start off the solver application (simulator) project. A short review of linear algebra for constrained motion computations (pseudoinverse) is given.