Integrability for peaffian constrained systems: A geometrical theory

Abstract

There exists an Ehresmann connection on the fibred constrained sub-manifold defined by Pfaffian differential constraints. It is proved that curvature of the connection is closely related to the d-σ commutation relation in the classical nonholonomic mechanics. It is also proved that conditions of complete integrability for Pfaffian systems in Frobenius sense are equivalent to the three requirements upon the conditional variations in the classical calculus of variations: (1) the variations belong to the constrained manifold, (2) variational operators commute with differential operators, (3) variations satisfy the Chetaev's conditions. Thus this theory verifies the conjecture or experience of researchers of mechanics on the integrability conditions in terms of variation calculus.