DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF SPATIAL FLEXIBLE MULTIBODY SYSTEMS USING JOINT COORDINATES

This paper presents a systematic method for deriving the minimum number of equations of motion for spatial flexible multibody systems. Relative kinematics are developed using relative joint co-ordinates and relative joint velocities to formulate a minimum number of equations of motion. The present method takes advantage of the simplicity of the absolute co-ordinate formulation and computational efficiency of the relative joint co-ordinate formulation. The system equations of motion are first formulated in terms of a coupled set of absolute reference co-ordinates and elastic modal co-ordinates. These equations are transformed to the joint co-ordinate space by use of a velocity transformation matrix including the elastic modal velocities. A computer algorithm is proposed and extended to closed loop mechanisms. One example of a flexible vehicle is presented and the results are discussed to illustrate the computational efficiency of the method.