A rotationless formulation of multibody dynamics: Modeling of screw joints and incorporation of control constraints

In the present work, a new energy-momentum conserving time-stepping scheme for multibody systems comprising screw joints is developed. In particular, it is shown that the underlying rotationless formulation of multibody dynamics along with a specific coordinate augmentation technique makes possible the energy-momentum discretization of the screw pair. In addition to that, control (or servo) constraints are treated within the rotationless framework of multibody dynamics. The control constraints are used to partially prescribe the motion of a multibody system. In particular, control constraints, in conjunction with the coordinate augmentation technique, make possible to solve inverse dynamics problems by applying the present simulation approach.