Modal representation of deformation and stress in flexible multibody simulation. (Q2767993)

A general multibody system with deformable body-elements motivated by robotics is discussed. Deformations of individual bodies in local frames are considered to be small, and are formulated using linear models. A large variety of connection types (kinematic, elastic, etc.) of bodies are admitted. Displacement fields of particular bodies are approximated by linear combination of shape functions and time-dependent unknown coefficients using Ritz method. In order to reduce the large number of unknowns when describing the system as a whole, modal representation of individual bodies has been introduced. The problem of proper selection of modal functions is widely discussed and demonstrated on two examples. The results of this study can be immediately used to increase the capabilities of specialized multibody codes. Therefore, the contribution of this paper consists not only in theoretical backgrounds, but also in practical application to robotics and other kinematic systems with deformable parts.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 0972.00063].