Inertia transfer concept based general method for the determination of the base inertial parameters

This paper presents a new algorithm to obtain the symbolic expressions of any of the possible base inertial parameter sets of a multibody system. Based on the “inertia transfer concept”, a procedure is proposed to write a system of equations from which the base parameters are obtained. This leads to an automatizable and general method to obtain these parameters symbolically. The method can also be used to determine base inertial parameters numerically, and it can be even more straightforward to implement and use than the standard numerical methods. An example is presented to illustrate in detail the application of the algorithm, and to compare its results with those of a standard numerical procedure. The symbolic base inertial parameters can be of interest in symbolic simplification of the dynamic equations for real-time applications, design optimization, dynamic parameter identification, model reduction, and in other fields.