Abstract:
The Chaplygin ball on a plane is considered under the action of the friction force which satisfies the following condition: $(\mathbf F,\mathbf u)<0$ as $\mathbf u\neq0$ and $\mathbf F=0$ as $\mathbf u=0$, where $\mathbf u$ is the gliding velocity. The ball is supposed to have a point contact with the supporting plane (this means that the contact spot is absent and also there is no rotation friction torque). The main task of the paper is to determine a set of possible stationary (or final) motions and their stability.
In the current paper it is shown that exactly three stationary motions are possible; these motions represent straightline uniform rolling motions of the ball without sliding, at that the ball is rotating around one of the primary axes of the inertia tensor. Rotation around the axis of the greatest moment of inertia is stable, around the middle one and the lowest one it is unstable.