Externally Induced Dissipative Collisions

Abstract

Let us consider a material point or a system (mechanical or otherwise) with finite degree of freedom, which at any time can be represented by a point in an Euclidean space E. Its evolution over some interval of time I ⊂ R, say I = [0, T] is described by a function q: I → E, t → q(t). The scalar product in E is supposed to be such that the kinetic energy is $\frac{1}{2}$ ∣q∣², whenever the time-derivative q = dq/dt exists.