Flexible Multibody System Applications Using Nodal and Modal Coordinates

Throughout the past decades a considerable amount of work has been dedicated to the development and application of formalisms to simulate flexible bodies in a multibody system (MBS). The two most common approaches to describe the deformation of a flexible body with respect to their floating frame of reference are to apply the linear finite element formulation and the linear modal approach using global mode shapes. On the field of flexible body modelling, this paper discusses two topics: a) the consideration of quadratic terms in the equations of deformation and b) the presentation of methods for global mode preparation to reduce the computer time for dynamic simulations without loss of accuracy regarding deformations. The proposed methods are applied in two examples, for the deformation of a stabilisation linkage of a car’s front suspension and for the simulation of the deployment of a flexible solar array.