Date of Award

Spring 2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

Program/Concentration

Mechanical Engineering

Committee Director

Gene J. W. Hou

Committee Member

Sebastian Bawab

Committee Member

Cheng Lin

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E56 S614 2008

Abstract

Research in computational dynamics has gained importance in the past few years because of the demand for analysis and simulation of various multi-body systems in the growing mechanical and aerospace industry. These multi-body systems are made of individual bodies that are interconnected via mechanical joints. Mathematically, these joints that connect the bodies can be described as constraint equations imposed upon the motions of the involved free bodies. This process will result in an equation of motion expressed in the form of a differential-algebraic equation. It is the main objective of this thesis to develop a solution algorithm that can take advantage of MATLAB to solve such differential-algebraic equation. The principle of virtual work is used in this study to formulate the equation of motion for a general three dimensional multi-body dynamic system that involves rigid as well as flexible bodies. A simple planer slider crank mechanism is then used as a vehicle to demonstrate the proposed MATLAB solution algorithm. Furthermore, the example problem also helps to investigate the effects of ODE solvers, the body-fixed coordinates and flexibility on the accuracy, and efficiency of the MATLAB solution algorithm.

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DOI

10.25777/a1gr-w345

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