Dynamic modeling of flexible multibody system using a meshing method

Multi-rigid-body system dynamics can be used to investigate the dynamics of a mechanical system of rigid bodies while the finite element method is often utilized to model the quasi-static elastic deformations of an elastic structure. However, neither of these two methods can resolve the real dynamics of a mechanical system when both rigid displacements and elastic deformations coexist. Therefore, this article proposes a meshing method to simulate the mechanical system with uniform mass point movements. To split the specified solid structure into a set of regularly distributed dynamic units, one can assume that the mass density of the structure is evenly distributed within the whole concrete volume and the elasticity and damping of the material are isotropic. Then the whole solid structure of each component can be divided into a number of tetrahedrons the vertexes of which are the points with the mass parameters. The original distances between every pair of adjacent points are supposed to be identical, and the stiffness and the damping coefficients are introduced to formulate the internal and external dynamics of the adjacent mass points. To illustrate the correction and effectiveness of the method, the dynamics problems of a number of regular elastic bodies are investigated with large rigid displacements accompanying elastic deformations. Computer simulations demonstrate that this method is especially useful for real mechanical systems where the rigid displacements and elastic deformations coexist.