Nonholonomic Constraints: a New Viewpoint

The purpose of this paper is to show that, at least for Lagrangians of mechanical type, nonholonomic Euler-Lagrange equations for a nonholonomic linear constraint D may be viewed as non-constrained Euler-Lagrange equations but on a new (generally not Lie) algebroid structure on D. The proposed novel formalism allows us to treat in a unified way a variety of situations in nonholonomic mechanics and gives rise to a version of Neoether Theorem producing actual first integrals in case of symmetries.