A METHOD FOR IMPROVING DYNAMIC SOLUTIONS IN FLEXIBLE MULTIBODY DYNAMICS

This paper presents a method for improving dynamic solutions that are obtained from the dynamic simulation of flexible multibody systems. Th e mode-acceleration concept in linear structural dynamics is utilized in the proposed method for improving accuracy in the postprocessing st age. A theoretical explanation is made on why the proposed method impr oves the dynamic solutions in the context of the mode-acceleration met hod. A mode-acceleration equation for each flexible body is defined an d the load term in the right hand side of the equation is represented as a combination of space-dependent and time-dependent terms so that e fficient computation of dynamic solutions can be achieved. The load te rm is obtained from dynamic simulation of a flexible multibody system and a finite element method is used to compute dynamic solutions by qu asi-static analyses. Numerical examples show the effectiveness of the proposed method. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.