A Python module to manipulate generalized Screws and Coscrews with geometric algebras (real Clifford algebras).
A Pypi package is available, please refer to the Pypi page or enter pip install gscrew
in a terminal.
First of all, you need to import the modules:
import gscrew
from gscrew.geometric_algebra import GeometricAlgebra
from gscrew.screw import Screw
The screw
module also provides a CoScrew
object and the comoment
function for calculating the comoment between a coscrew and a screw.
Once these modules have been imported, we can create the geometric algebra in which we will be working. For basic physical applications, a three-dimensionnal algebra should suffice:
my_algebra = GeometricAlgebra(3)
locals().update(my_algebra.blades)
The second line adds the basis blades to the local variables so that we will be able to create new multivectors just by performing linear combinations of these basis blades. For a 3D algebra, the basis blades are: s, e1, e2, e3, e12, e13, e32, e123.
We can now start working with Screw and CoScrew classes:
O = 0 * s # the origin of the reference frame
S = 1 + (2*e2) + (3*e3) # the direction of the screw
M = (e1) + (5*e3) # the moment of the screw
my_screw = Screw(O, S, M)
All the code is provided under the GNU General Public Licence v3.0+ (GPLv3+)