Thermo-elasticity displacement formulation for constrained articulated mechanical systems

Abstract

This paper proposes an approach for thermal analysis of articulated systems subject to boundary and motion constraints (BMC). The solution framework is designed to capture large temperature fluctuations, significant change in geometry due to reference configuration and deformations, and geometric nonlinearity due to articulated mechanical systems (AMS) large displacements and spinning motion. Thermal-expansion displacements, which do not contribute to rigid-body translations, are determined from thermal stretch of position-gradient vectors using a new sweeping matrix technique designed to eliminate dependence on translational rigid-body modes. A new quadratic thermal-energy kinetic form is defined and used to formulate a dynamic force vector that accounts for thermal transient and inertia effects. Nodal thermal displacements are used in formulating AMS differential/algebraic equations (DAEs), and consequently, thermal stresses due to BMC equations are automatically accounted for based on integration of thermal analysis and Lagrange-D’Alembert principle, which is the foundation of computational multibody system (MBS) algorithms. The approach used in this study for large-displacement constrained and unconstrained thermal expansions is based on multiplicative decomposition of position-gradient matrix, instead of strain additive decomposition, for solution of thermo-elasticity problems. Four configurations are used to define continuum geometry and displacements: straight configuration, reference configuration, thermal-expansion configuration, and current configuration. The proposed approach allows applying thermal loads during constrained large displacements, does not impose restrictions on the choice of thermal coefficients, captures reference-configuration geometry and change in inertia forces due to temperature fluctuations, accounts for thermal displacement in formulating AMS nonlinear constraint equations, and allows for integration with MBS algorithms for the study of a wide range of thermo-elasticity problems.