• During crab walking of hexapod, impact forces are generated, whenever the swing leg touches the ground. • Both specific energy consumption and dynamic stability margin decrease with the increase in trunk body velocity. • Specific energy consumption increases but dynamic stability margin decreases with the increase in body height. • Both specific energy and dynamic stability margin increase with the body stroke, lateral offset, crab angle. • Both specific energy consumption and dynamic stability margin increase with the increase in duty factor. This paper deals with the development of a dynamical model related to crab walking of a hexapod robot to determine the feet forces' distributions, energy consumption and dynamic stability measure considering the inertial effects of the legs on the system, which has not been attempted before. Both forward and inverse kinematic analyses of the robot are carried out with an assigned fixed global frame and subsequent local frames in the trunk body and joints of each leg. Coupled multi-body dynamic model of the robot is developed based on free-body diagram approach. Optimal feet forces and corresponding joint torques on all the legs are determined based on the minimization of the sum of the squares of joint torques, using quadratic programming (QP) method. An energy consumption model is developed to determine the minimum energy required for optimal values of feet forces. To ensure dynamically stable gaits, dynamic gait stability margin (DGSM) is determined from the angular momentum of the system about the supporting edges. Computer simulations have been carried out to test the effectiveness of the developed dynamic model with crab wave gaits on a banking surface. It is observed that when the swing leg touches the ground, impact forces (sudden shoot outs) are generated and their effects are also observed on the joints of the legs. The effects of walking parameters, namely trunk body velocity, body stroke, leg offset, body height, crab angle etc. on power consumption and stability during crab motion for duty factors (DFs) like 1/2, 2/3, 3/4 have also been studied.