Variational approach to nonholonomic and inequality-constrained mechanics
Phys. Rev. E 113, 024126 – Published 18 February, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/rch9-wsbw
Abstract
Variational principles play a central role in classical mechanics, providing compact formulations of dynamics and direct access to conserved quantities. While holonomic systems admit well-known action formulations, nonholonomic systems—subject to nonintegrable velocity constraints or position inequality constraints—have long resisted a general extremized action treatment. In this work, we construct an explicit and general action for nonholonomic motion, motivated by the classical limit of the quantum Schwinger-Keldysh action formalism, rediscovered by Galley. Our formulation recovers the correct dynamics of the Lagrange-d'Alembert equations via extremization of a scalar action. We validate the approach on canonical examples using direct numerical optimization of the novel action, bypassing equations of motion. Our framework extends the reach of variational mechanics and offers new analytical and computational tools for constrained systems.
