Model-Order Reduction of Flexible Multibody Dynamics Via Free-Interface Component Mode Synthesis Method

Abstract A new method of model-order reduction for the flexible multibody system which undergoes large deformation and rotation is proposed. At first, the flexible multibody system is modeled by absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF), and then, the whole motion process of the system is divided into a series of quasi-static equilibrium configurations according to a given criterion. Afterward, motion equation is locally linearized based on the Taylor expansion. Therefore, the constant tangent stiffness matrix is obtained and does not need to be updated until the next configuration. Based on the locally linearized motion equation, the free-interface component mode synthesis (CMS) method is adopted to reduce the degrees-of-freedom (DOF) of the flexible multibody system molded by ANCF. The generalized-α integrator is used to solve the reduced motion equation. To verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method, three examples including a free-falling pendulum, a flexible spinning beam and a deployable sail arrays are presented. Results show that the proposed method is able to reduce the computing time and maintain high accuracy.