THE LAGRANGIAN DERIVATION OF KANE’S EQUATIONS

Abstract

The Lagrangian approach to the development of dynamics equations for a multi-body system, constrained or otherwise, requires solving the forward kinematics of the system at velocity level in order to derive the kinetic energy of the system. The kinetic-energy expression should then be differentiated multiple times to derive the equations of motion of the system. Among these differentiations, the partial derivative of kinetic energy with respect to the system generalized coordinates is specially cumbersome. In this paper, we will derive this partial derivative using a novel kinematic relation for the partial derivative of angular velocity with respect to the system generalized coordinates. It will be shown that, as a result of the use of this relation, the equations of motion of the system are directly derived in the form of Kane’s equations.