Calculating Jacobian coefficients of primitive constraints with respect to Euler parameters

It is a fundamental problem to calculate Jacobian coefficients of constraint equations in assembly constraint solving because most approaches to solving an assembly constraint system will finally resort to a numerical iterative method that requires the first-order derivatives of the constraint equations. The most-used method of deriving the Jacobian coefficients is to use virtual rotation which is originally presented to derive the equations of motion of constrained mechanical systems. However, when Euler parameters are adopted as the state variables to represent the transformation matrix, using the virtual rotation will yield erroneous formulae of Jacobian coefficients. The reason is that Euler parameters are incompatible with virtual rotation. In this paper, correct formulae of Jacobian coefficients of geometric constraints with respect to Euler parameters are presented in both Cartesian coordinates and relative generalized coordinates. Experimental results show that our proposed formulae make Newton–Raphson iterative method converge faster and more stable.