Contact Conditions for Cylindrical,Prismatic, and Screw Joints in Flexible Multibody Systems

This paper focuses on the modeling of the contact conditionsassociated with cylindrical, prismatic, and screw joints in flexiblemultibody systems. In the classical formulation these joints aredeveloped for rigid bodies, and kinematic constraints are enforcedbetween the kinematic variables of the two bodies. These constraintsexpress the conditions for relative translation and rotation of the twobodies along and about a body-fixed axis, and imply the relative slidingand rotation of the two bodies which remain in constant contact witheach other. However, these kinematic constraints no longer implyrelative sliding with contact when one of the bodies is flexible. Toremedy this situation, a sliding joint and a sliding screwjoint are proposed that involves kinematic constraints at theinstantaneous point of contact between the sliding bodies. For slidingscrew joints, additional constraints are added on the relative rotationof the contacting bodies. Various numerical examples are presented thatdemonstrate the dramatically different behavior of cylindrical,prismatic, or screw joints and of the proposed sliding and sliding screwjoints in the presence of elastic bodies, and the usefulness of theseconstraint elements in the modeling of complex mechanical systems.