A new modeling method for flexible multibody systems

In this paper, the new form of Kane’s equations of motion for constrained systems is derived based on the general dynamic equation in the form of virtual power. A new dynamic modeling method for large rotation and deformation analysis of a flexible multibody system that undergoes arbitrary displacements is proposed based on the new form of Kane’s equations and the absolute nodal coordinate formulation. The equations of motion of the flexible multibody system established by the proposed modeling method are a set of pure differential equations without multipliers, and they have a unified compact form, which helps to design the controller and can avoid the inconvenience caused by the undetermined multipliers in the numerical calculations. Finally, a planar flexible double pendulum system is modeled by using the proposed modeling method and the Lagrange method of the first kind, respectively, and the validity and feasibility of the proposed method are demonstrated by comparing the numerical results obtained from the above two methods.