HYBRID EQUATIONS OF MOTION FOR FLEXIBLE MULTIBODY SYSTEMS USING QUASICOORDINATES

A variety of engineering systems, such as automobiles, aircraft, rotor craft, robots, spacecraft, etc., can be modeled as flexible multibody systems. The individual flexible bodies are in general characterized b y distributed parameters. In most earlier investigations they were app roximated by some spatial discretization procedure, such as the classi cal Rayleigh-Ritz method or the finite element method. This paper pres ents a mathematical formulation for distributed-parameter multibody sy stems consisting of a set of hybrid (ordinary and partial) differentia l equations of motion in terms of quasicoordinates. Moreover, the equa tions for the elastic motions include rotatory inertia and shear defor mation effects. The hybrid set is cast in state form, thus making it s uitable for control design.