Nonlinear connections for nonconservative mechanical systems (Q2480675)

The authors use systematically the geometry of Lagrange spaces in order to study nonconservative mechanical systems. It is shown that the geometry of a nonconservative mechanical system is determined by its associated semi-spray and the corresponding nonlinear connection. The semi-spray is uniquely determined by the symplectic structure and the energy of the corresponding Lagrange space and the external force field. It is proved that the corresponding nonlinear connection is uniquely determined by its compatibility with the metric tensor and the symplectic structure of the Lagrange space. It is also studied the variation of the energy and Lagrangian functions along the evolution curves and the horizontal curves. The paper contains examples of mechanical systems which are dissipative and for which the evolution nonlinear connection is either metric nor symplectic.