Enveloping surfaces and admissible velocities of heavy rigid bodies

The general Euler-Poisson problem of rigid body motion is investigated. We study the three-dimensional algebraic level surfaces of the first integrals, and their topological bifurcations. The main result of this article is an analytical and qualitatively complete description of the projections of these integral manifolds to the body-fixed space of angular velocities. We classify the possible types of these invariant sets and analyze the dependence of their topology on the parameters of the body and the constants of the first integrals. Particular emphasis is given to the enveloping surfaces of the sets of admissible angular velocities. Their pre-images in the reduced phase space induce a Heegaard splitting which lends itself for a general choice of complete Poincare surfaces of section, irrespective of whether or not the system is integrable.