DynManto: A Matlab Toolbox for the Simulation and Analysis of Multibody Systems

Abstract The Dynamic Modeling and Analysis Toolbox DynManto is an acedemic Matlab code which allows the modeling, simulation and sensitivity analysis of spatial multibody systems. The kinematics of rigid and flexible bodies is described by the floating frame of reference formulation and the body properties are provided by standard input data files. In this way the evaluation of the equations of motion is computationally efficient and an arbitrary parameterization of the system can be achieved. The latter is important in the automated adjoint sensitivity analysis of multibody systems, which yields gradient information for system analyses, parameter identifications or gradient-based optimizations. The capabilities of DynManto are demonstrated by the application examples of a flexible two-arm manipulator and Chebyshev’s Lambda Mechanism.