SIMULATION OF MULTIBODY SYSTEMS BY A PARALLEL EXTRAPOLATION METHOD

In the simulation of multibody systems, the equations of motion are ge nerated by so-called multibody formalisms as a system of differential- algebraic equations (DAEs). A recently developed extrapolation method for integrating the equations of motion is investigated. Extrapolation methods for ordinary differential equations are briefly reviewed, bef ore proceeding to the DAE method. The inherent parallelism of the extr apolation scheme is used for an implementation on a transputer network . Implementation aspects such as the distribution of work during integ ration, and differences in stepsize control of serial and parallel alg orithms are discussed. The efficiency of the parallel algorithm is dem onstrated for a multibody system that is part of a mechanical printing device.