On the Motion of Lineal Bodies Subject to Linear Damping

Abstract

Wilms (1995) has considered the plane motion of three lineal rigid bodies subject to linear damping over their length. He shows that these plane single-degree-of-freedom systems are governed by precisely the same fundamental differential equation. It is not unusual that several dynamical systems may be formally characterized by the same differential equation, but the universal differential equation for these systems is unusual because it is exactly the same equation for the three very different systems. It is shown here that these problems belong to a more general class of problems for which the differential equation is exactly the same for every lineal rigid body regardless of its geometry.