Integrating factors and conservation laws for nonconservative dynamical systems (Q1075077)

The authors present, in this paper, a general approach to the construction of conservation laws for classical nonconservative dynamical systems. The conservation laws are constructed by finding corresponding integrating factors for the equations of motion. Necessary conditions for existence of the conservation laws are detailed in this paper. Also, a connection between an 'a priori' known conservation law and the corresponding integrating factors is established. Section 5. contains the application of the theory.