Model smoothing method of contact-impact dynamics in flexible multibody systems

An original model smoothing method for contact-impact dynamics in flexible multibody system is proposed in this work. First, the model smoothing method is applied to improve the computational efficiency, in which the instant stresses of flexible bodies are replaced by the time-averaged stresses in a short time during the modeling stage, the resulting equations of motion do not contain high frequency components. In the following, the fundamental issues of continuous contact force models are discussed. A smoothing method of modeling linear complementarity problem (LCP) is proposed for the dynamic analysis of flexible multibody system. This approach takes into account the permanent contact and impact, which has the great merit that can be used straightforward without switching contact models. Numerical results show that the model smoothing method is a new effective approach for the numerical analysis of contact-impact problems in flexible multibody system. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.