Reducing round-off errors in rigid body dynamics

✍ Scribed by Gilles Vilmart

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 445 KB
• Volume: 227
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-9991
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jcp.2008.04.013

✦ Synopsis

In several recent publications, numerical integrators based on Jacobi elliptic functions are proposed for solving the equations of motion of the rigid body. Although this approach yields theoretically the exact solution, a standard implementation shows an unexpected linear propagation of round-off errors. We explain how deterministic error contribution can be avoided, so that round-off behaves like a random walk.