Numerical and Computational Challenges
in Science and Engineering Program
Francesco Fasso, University of Padova (Italy)
LECTURE
January 11, 2002
Numerical Investigation of Slow Chaos in Rigid Body Dynamics
The talk focuses on numerical integrations of a slightly perturbed
rigid body with the aim of detecting "slowly chaotic" motions
of the system. "Slow chaos" is a phenomenon which is associated
to resonances in perturbed superintegrable Hamiltonian systems and takes
place on very long time scales. Because of this, symplectic methods
are valuable. We describe an approach to symplectic integration on manifolds
based on an implementation of the splitting method using
different systems of local coordinates (Euler angles, in the rigid body
case). The method performs very well for an axially symmetric rigid
body; there are open problems for asymmetric bodies.
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