A SYSTEM-LEVEL COMPONENT MODE APPROACH FOR FLEXIBLE MULTIBODY DYNAMICSIMULATION

Computationally efficient, high fidelity flexible multibody dynamic si mulation requires that a flexible body model be of low dimension, yet account for effects of interest. Model reduction methods are reviewed, and a new type of component mode, called a system-level component mod e, is extracted from results of analysis of the entire system. A syste m-level component mode is decomposed into two parts: deformation of th e component and rigid-body motion. It is shown that the latter degrade s simulation accuracy. Extraction of rigid-body modes from the system- level component modes is carried out by maximizing strain energy for u nit displacement norm. Dependency, or near dependency, in the resultin g set of deformation modes is identified and removed using a method ba sed on singular value decomposition. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.