AN EFFICIENT NEWTON-TYPE ITERATION FOR THE NUMERICAL-SOLUTION OF HIGHLY OSCILLATORY CONSTRAINED MULTIBODY DYNAMIC-SYSTEMS

In this paper we present a coordinate-split (CS) technique for the num erical solution of the equations of motion of constrained multibody dy namic systems. We show how the CS technique can be implemented within the context of commonly used solution methods, for increased effciency and reliability. A particularly challenging problem for multibody dyn amics is the numerical solution of highly oscillatory nonlinear mechan ical systems. Highly stable implicit integration methods with large st epsizes can be used to damp the oscillation, if it is of small amplitu de. However, the standard Newton iteration is known to experience seve re convergence difficulties which force a restriction of the stepsize. We introduce a modified coordinate-split (CM) iteration which overcom es these problems. Convergence analysis explains the improved converge nce for nonlinear oscillatory systems, and numerical experiments illus trate the effectiveness of the new method.