Curvature and mechanics

Classical or Newtonian Mechanics is put in the setting of Riemannian Geometry as a simple mechanical system (M, K, V), where M is a manifold which represents a configuration space, K and V are the kinetic and potential energies respectively of the system. To study the geometry of a simple mechanical system, we study the curvatures of the mechanical manifold (M_h, g_h) relative to a total energy value h, where M_h is an admissible configuration space and g_h the Jacobi metric relative to the energy value h. We call these curvatures h-mechanical curvatures of the simple mechanical system.Results are obtained on the signs of h-mechanical curvature for a general simple mechanical system in a neighborhood of the boundary ?M_h = {xεM: V(x) = h} and in a neighborhood of a critical point of the potential function V. Also we construct $\text{m = (}\text{n}\text{2}\text{) (n =}\text{dim}\text{M)}$ functions defined globally on M_h, called curvature functions which characterize the sign of the h-mechanical curvature. Applications are made to the Kepler problem and the three-body problem.