Modified reduced transfer equations for linear multibody system dynamics

Abstract

The transfer matrix method for multibody systems (MSTMM) has been extensively applied in various engineering practices, pursuing a high computational efficiency. Partitioning the state vector of each connecting point into two complementary reduced state vectors and relating them by a point-wise linear formulation leads to a reduced form of the MSTMM. In this way, sequential multiplications of the transfer matrices of the components will be avoided, and the numerical stability of the MSTMM gets better. According to existing manners, the original transfer matrices of all the body components should be obtained first in the context of the reduced MSTMM. Modified reduced transfer equations for linear multibody systems independent from the original transfer equations are proposed in this paper to eliminate useless operations relating to zero operands in the transfer matrices and consistence matrices for multi-input body components. The modified reduced transfer equations for linear multibody systems is verified by comparing the computational results with those obtained by using the original reduced transfer equations as well as finite element method.