Implementation and efficiency of two geometric stiffening approaches

When the modeling of flexible bodies is required in multibody systems, the floating frame of reference formulations are probably the most efficient methods available. In the case of beams undergoing high speed rotations, the geometric stiffening effect can appear due to geometric nonlinearities, and it is often not captured by the aforementioned methods, since it is common to linearize the elastic forces assuming small deformations. The present work discusses the implementation of different existing methods developed to consider such geometric nonlinearities within a floating frame of reference formulation in natural coordinates, making emphasis on the relation between efficiency and accuracy of the resulting algorithms, seeking to provide practical criteria of use.     

Definition of the Elastic Forces in the Finite-Element Absolute Nodal Coordinate Formulation and the Floating Frame of Reference Formulation

The equivalence of the finite-element formulations used inflexible multibody dynamics is the focus of this investigation. Thisequivalence will be used to address several fundamental issues related tothe deformations, flexible body coordinate systems, and the geometriccentrifugal stiffening effect. Two conceptually different finite-elementformulations that lead to exact modeling of the rigid body dynamics will beused. The first one is the absolute nodal coordinateformulation in which beams and plates can be treated as isoparametricelements. This formulation leads to a constant and symmetric mass matrix andhighly nonlinear elastic forces. In this study, it is demonstrated thatdifferent element coordinate systems which are used for the convenience ofdescribing the element deformations lead to similar results as the elementsize is reduced. In particular, two element frames are used;the pinned and the tangent frames. The pinned frame has one ofits axes passing through two nodes of the element, while the tangent frame isrigidly attached to one of the ends of the element. Numerical resultsobtained using these two different frames are found tobe in good agreement as the element size decreases. The relationshipbetween the coordinates used in the absolute nodal coordinate formulationand the floating frame of reference formulation is presented. Thisrelationship can be used to obtain the highly nonlinear expression of thestrain energy used in the absolute nodal coordinate formulation from thesimple energy expression used in the floating frame of referenceformulation. It is also shown that the source of the nonlinearityis due to the finite rotation of the element. The result of the analysispresented clearly demonstrates that the instability observedin high-speed rotor analytical models due to the neglect of the geometriccentrifugal stiffening is not a problem inherent to a particular finite-element formulation. Such a problem can only be avoided by considering the known linear effect of the geometric centrifugal stiffening or by using a nonlinear elastic model as recently demonstrated. Fourier analysis of the solutions obtained in this investigation also sheds new light on the fundamental problem of the choice of the deformable body coordinate system in the floating frame of reference formulation. Another method forformulating the elastic forces in the absolute nodal coordinate formulationbased on a continuum mechanics approach is also presented.     

First order sensitivity analysis of flexible multibody systems using absolute nodal coordinate formulation

Design sensitivity analysis of flexible multibody systems is important in optimizing the performance of mechanical systems. The choice of coordinates to describe the motion of multibody systems has a great influence on the efficiency and accuracy of both the dynamic and sensitivity analysis. In the flexible multibody system dynamics, both the floating frame of reference formulation (FFRF) and absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) are frequently utilized to describe flexibility, however, only the former has been used in design sensitivity analysis. In this article, ANCF, which has been recently developed and focuses on modeling of beams and plates in large deformation problems, is extended into design sensitivity analysis of flexible multibody systems. The Motion equations of a constrained flexible multibody system are expressed as a set of index-3 differential algebraic equations (DAEs), in which the element elastic forces are defined using nonlinear strain-displacement relations. Both the direct differentiation method and adjoint variable method are performed to do sensitivity analysis and the related dynamic and sensitivity equations are integrated with HHT-I3 algorithm. In this paper, a new method to deduce system sensitivity equations is proposed. With this approach, the system sensitivity equations are constructed by assembling the element sensitivity equations with the help of invariant matrices, which results in the advantage that the complex symbolic differentiation of the dynamic equations is avoided when the flexible multibody system model is changed. Besides that, the dynamic and sensitivity equations formed with the proposed method can be efficiently integrated using HHT-I3 method, which makes the efficiency of the direct differentiation method comparable to that of the adjoint variable method when the number of design variables is not extremely large. All these improvements greatly enhance the application value of the direct differentiation method in the engineering optimization of the ANCF-based flexible multibody systems.     

On the influence of model reduction techniques in topology optimization of flexible multibody systems using the floating frame of reference approach

Employing the floating frame of reference formulation in the topology optimization of dynamically loaded components of flexible multibody systems seems to be a natural choice. In this formulation the deformation of flexible bodies is approximated by global shape functions, which are commonly obtained from finite element models using model reduction techniques. For topology optimization these finite element models can be parameterized using the solid isotropic material with penalization (SIMP) approach. However, little is known about the interplay of model reduction and SIMP parameterization. Also securing the model reduction quality despite major changes of the design during the optimization has not been addressed yet. Thus, using the examples of a flexible frame and a slider-crank mechanism this work discusses the proper choice of the model reduction technique in the topology optimization of flexible multibody systems.     

A 3D Finite Element Method for Flexible Multibody Systems

An efficient finite element (FE) formulation for the simulation of multibody systems is derived from Hamilton's principle. According to the classical assumptions of multibody systems, a large rotation formulation has been chosen, where large rotations and large displacements, but only small deformations of the single bodies are taken into account. The strain tensor is linearized with respect to a co-rotated frame. The present approach uses absolute coordinates for the degrees of freedom and forms an alternative to the floating frame of reference formulation that is based on relative coordinates and describes deformation with respect to a co-rotated frame. Due to the modified strain tensor, the present formulation distinguishes significantly from standard nodal based nonlinear FE methods. Constraints are defined in integral form for every pair of surfaces of two bodies. This leads to a small number of constraint equations and avoids artificial stress singularities. The resulting mass and stiffness matrices are constant apart from a transformation based on a single rotation matrix for each body. The particular structure of this transformation allows to prevent from the usually expensive factorization of the system Jacobian within implicit time--integration methods. The present method has been implemented and tested with the FE-package NGSolve and specific 3D examples are verified with a standard beam formulation.     

Absolute nodal coordinate plane beam formulation for multibody systems dynamics

A new plane beam dynamic formulation for constrained multibody system dynamics is developed. Flexible multibody system dynamics includes rigid body dynamics and superimposed vibratory motions. The complexity of mechanical system dynamics originates from rotational kinematics, but the natural coordinate formulation does not use rotational coordinates, so that simple dynamic formulation is possible. These methods use only translational coordinates and simple algebraic constraints. A new formulation for plane flexible multibody systems are developed utilizing the curvature of a beam and point masses. Using absolute nodal coordinates, a constant mass matrix is obtained and the elastic force becomes a nonlinear function of the nodal coordinates. In this formulation, no infinitesimal or finite rotation assumptions are used and no assumption on the magnitude of the element rotations is made. The distributed body mass and applied forces are lumped to the point masses. Closed loop mechanical systems consisting of elastic beams can be modeled without constraints since the loop closure constraints can be substituted as beam longitudinal elasticity. A curved beam is modeled automatically. Several numerical examples are presented to show the effectiveness of this method.     

Experimental validation of rigid-flexible coupling dynamic formulation for hub–beam system

The aim of this paper is to compare the accuracy of the absolute nodal coordinate formulation and the floating frame of reference formulation for the rigid-flexible coupling dynamics of a three-dimensional Euler–Bernoulli beam by numerical and experimental validation. In the absolute nodal coordinate formulation, based on geometrically exact beam theory and considering the torsion effect, the material curvature of the beam is derived, and then variational equations of motion of a three-dimensional beam are obtained, which consist of three position coordinates, two slope coordinates, and one rotational coordinate. In the floating frame of reference formulation, the displacement of an arbitrary point on the beam is described by the rigid-body motion and a small superimposed deformation displacement. Based on linear elastic theory, the quadratic terms of the axial strain are neglected, and the curvatures are simplified to the first order. Considering both the linear damping and the quadratic air resistance damping, the equations of motion of the multibody system composed of air-bearing test bed and a cantilevered three-dimensional beam are derived based on the principle of virtual work. In order to verify the results of the computer simulation, two experiments are carried out: an experiment of hub–beam system with large deformation and a dynamic stiffening experiment. The comparison of the simulation and experiment results shows that in case of large deformation, the frequency result obtained by the floating frame of reference formulation is lower than that obtained by the experiment. On the contrary, the result obtained by the absolute nodal coordinate formulation agrees well with that obtained by the experiment. It is also shown that the floating frame of reference formulation based on linear elastic theory cannot reveal the dynamic stiffening effect. Finally, the applicability of the floating frame of reference formulation is clarified.     

Simulation process of flexible multibody systems with non-modal model order reduction techniques

One important issue for the simulation of flexible multibody systems is the reduction of the flexible body’s degrees of freedom. In this work, nonmodal model reduction techniques for flexible multibody systems within the floating frame of reference framework are considered. While traditionally in the multibody community modal techniques in many different forms are used, here other methods from system dynamics and mathematics are in the focus. For the reduction process, finite element data and user inputs are necessary. Prior to the reduction process, the user first needs to choose boundary conditions fitting the chosen reference frame before defining the appropriate in- and outputs. In this work, four different possibilities of modeling appropriate interface points to reduce the number of inputs and outputs are presented.     

Pulse control of flexible multibody systems

An active pulse control method is developed to reduce the vibrations of multibody systems resulting from impact loadings. The pulse, which is a function of system generalized coordinates and velocities, is determined analytically using energy and momentum balance equations of the impacting bodies. Elastic components in the multibody system are discretized using the finite element method. The system equations of motions and nonlinear algebraic constraint equations describing mechanical joints between different components are written in the Lagrangian formulation using a finite set of coupled reference position and local elastic generalized coordinates. A set of independent differential equations are identified by the generalized coordinate partitioning of the constraint Jacobian matrix. These equations are written in the state space formulation and integrated forward in time using a direct numerical integration method. Dependent coordinates are then determined using the constraint kinematic relations. Points in time at which impact occurs are monitored by an impact predictor function, which controls the integration algorithms and forces for the solution of the momentum relation, to define the jump discontinuities in the composite velocity vector as well as the system reaction forces. The effectiveness of the active pulse control in reducing the vibration of flexible multibody aircraft during the touchdown impact is investigated and numerical results are presented.     

Dynamics of Flexible Multibody Systems Using Virtual Work and Linear Graph Theory

By combining linear graph theory with the principle of virtualwork, a dynamic formulation is obtained that extends graph-theoreticmodelling methods to the analysis of flexible multibody systems. Thesystem is represented by a linear graph, in which nodes representreference frames on rigid and flexible bodies, and edges representcomponents that connect these frames. By selecting a spanning tree forthe graph, the analyst can choose the set of coordinates appearing inthe final system of equations. This set can include absolute, joint, orelastic coordinates, or some combination thereof. If desired, allnon-working constraint forces and torques can be automaticallyeliminated from the dynamic equations by exploiting the properties ofvirtual work. The formulation has been implemented in a computerprogram, DynaFlex, that generates the equations of motion in symbolicform. Three examples are presented to demonstrate the application of theformulation, and to validate the symbolic computer implementation.     

Complex Flexible Multibody Systems with Application to Vehicle Dynamics

A formulation to describe the linear elastodynamics offlexible multibody systems is presented in this paper. By using a lumpedmass formulation the flexible body mass is represented by a collectionof point masses with rotational inertia. Furthermore, the bodydeformations are described with respect to a body-fixed coordinateframe. The coupling between the flexible body deformation and its rigidbody motion is completely preserved independently of the methods used todescribe the body flexibility. In particular, if the finite elementmethod is chosen for this purpose only the standard finite elementparameters obtained from any commercial finite element code are used inthe methodology. In this manner, not only the analyst can use any typeof finite elements in the multibody model but the same finite elementmodel can be used to evaluate the structural integrity of any systemcomponent also. To deal with complex-shaped structural models offlexible bodies it is necessary to reduce the number of generalizedcoordinates to a reasonable dimension. This is achieved with thecomponent mode synthesis at the cost of specializing the formulation toflexible multibody models experiencing linear elastic deformations only.Structural damping is introduced to achieve better numerical performancewithout compromising the quality of the results. The motions of therigid body and flexible body reference frames are described usingCartesian coordinates. The kinematic constraints between the differentsystem components are evaluated in terms of this set of generalizedcoordinates. The equations of motion of the flexible multibody systemare solved by using the augmented Lagrangean method and a sparse matrixsolver. Finally, the methodology is applied to model a vehicle with acomplex flexible chassis, simulated in typical handling scenarios. Theresults of the simulations are discussed in terms of their numericalprecision and efficiency.     

Structural sensitivity analysis of flexible multibody systems modeled with the floating frame of reference approach using the adjoint variable method

For the efficient analysis and optimization of flexible multibody systems, gradient information is often required. Next to simple and easy-to-implement finite difference approaches, analytical methods, such as the adjoint variable method, have been developed and are now well established for the sensitivity analysis in multibody dynamics. They allow the computation of exact gradients and require normally less computational effort for large-scale problems. In the current work, we apply the adjoint variable method to flexible multibody systems with kinematic loops, which are modeled using the floating frame of reference formulation. Thereby, in order to solve ordinary differential equations only, the equations of motion are brought into minimal form using coordinate partitioning, and the constraint equations at position and velocity level are incorporated in the adjoint dynamics. For testing and illustrative purposes, the procedure is applied to compute the structural gradient for a flexible piston rod of a slider–crank mechanism.     

The development of a sliding joint for very flexible multibody dynamics using absolute nodal coordinate formulation

In this paper, a formulation for a spatial sliding joint is derived using absolute nodal coordinates and non-generalized coordinate and it allows a general multibody move along a very flexible cable. The large deformable motion of a spatial cable is presented using absolute nodal coordinate formulation, which is based on the finite element procedures and the general continuum mechanics theory to represent the elastic forces. And the nongeneralized coordinate, which is related to neither the inertia forces nor the external forces, is used to describe an arbitrary position along the centerline of a very flexible cable. Hereby, the non-generalized coordinate represents the arc-length parameter. The constraint equations for the sliding joint are expressed in terms of generalized coordinate and nongeneralized coordinate. In the constraint equations for the sliding joint, one constraint equation can be systematically eliminated. There are two independent Lagrange multipliers in the final system equations of motion associated with the sliding joint. The development of this sliding joint is important to analyze many mechanical systems such as pulley systems and pantograph-catenary systems for high speed-trains.     

Stress recovery with Krylov-subspaces in reduced elastic multibody systems

A method for the recovery of stresses in reduced elastic multibody systems is presented. Elastic coordinates of a flexible body belonging to a reduced elastic multibody system are therefore premultiplied with a matrix of shape functions for stresses. Whereas the classic procedures for stress recovery in elastic multibody systems use shape functions for stresses that belong to eigenmodes and particular modes, this work also investigates shape functions for stresses that are derived from a Krylov-subspace projection. The presented method for stress recovery is implemented in a process chain containing different software tools and allows the evaluation of stresses during the runtime of the elastic multibody simulation. Accordingly, the performance of the developed process is examined with the help of a simple example. Results show that the usage of shape functions for stresses that are derived from a Krylov-subspace projection can improve the approximation of stresses in a user-defined frequency range.     

考虑刚-柔-热耦合的板结构多体系统的动力学建模

对热载荷作用下中心刚体与大变形薄板多体系统的动力学建模问题进行研究.基于Kirchhoff假设,从格林应变和曲率与绝对位移的非线性关系式出发,推导了非线性广义弹性力阵,用绝对节点坐标法建立了大变形矩形薄板的有限元离散的动力学变分方程.为了考虑刚体姿态运动、弹性变形和温度变化的相互耦合作用,推导了热流密度与绝对节点坐标之间的关系式.引入系统的运动学约束方程,建立了中心刚体-矩形板多体系统的考虑刚-柔-热耦合的热传导方程和带拉格朗日乘子的第一类拉格朗日动力学方程.为了有效地提高计算效率,将改进的中心差分法和广义-α法相结合,求解热传导方程和动力学方程,差分后的方程通过牛顿迭代法耦合求解.对刚-柔耦合和刚-柔-热三者耦合两种模型的仿真结果进行比较表明,刚体运动对温度梯度和热变形的影响显著.此外,本文建模方法考虑了几何非线性项,因此也考虑了热膨胀引起的轴向变形对横向变形的影响.     

Flexible Multibody Systems Models Using Composite Materials Components

The use of a multibody methodology to describe the large motion of complex systems that experience structural deformations enables to represent the complete system motion, the relative kinematics between the components involved, the deformation of the structural members and the inertia coupling between the large rigid body motion and the system elastodynamics. In this work, the flexible multibody dynamics formulations of complex models are extended to include elastic components made of composite materials, which may be laminated and anisotropic. The deformation of any structural member must be elastic and linear, when described in a coordinate frame fixed to one or more material points of its domain, regardless of the complexity of its geometry. To achieve the proposed flexible multibody formulation, a finite element model for each flexible body is used. For the beam composite material elements, the sections properties are found using an asymptotic procedure that involves a two-dimensional finite element analysis of their cross-section. The equations of motion of the flexible multibody system are solved using an augmented Lagrangian formulation and the accelerations and velocities are integrated in time using a multi-step multi-order integration algorithm based on the Gear method.     

Analysis of multibody systems with flexible plates using variational graph-theoretic methods

This work treats the problem of modelling multibody systems with structural flexibility. By combining linear graph theory with the principle of virtual work and finite elements, a dynamic formulation is obtained that extends graph-theoretic (GT) modelling methods to the analysis of thin flexible plates for multibody systems. The system is represented by a linear graph, in which nodes represent reference frames on flexible plates, and edges represent components that connect these frames. To generate the equations of motion with elastic deformations, the flexible plates are discretized using a triangular thin shell finite element based on the discrete Kirchhoff criterion and can be used to discretize bidirectional bodies such as satellite panels, flatbed trailers, and mechanisms with plates. Three flexible systems with plates are analyzed to illustrate the performance of this new variational graph-theoretic formulation and its ability to generate directly a set of motion equations for flexible multibody systems (FMS) without additional user input.