Constrained integration of rigid body dynamics

✍ Scribed by P. Betsch; P. Steinmann

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 600 KB
• Volume: 191
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0045-7825
• DOI: 10.1016/s0045-7825(01)00283-3

✦ Synopsis

In the present paper rigid body dynamics is formulated as mechanical system with holonomic constraints. This approach oers the appealing possibility to deal with ®nite rotations without employing any speci®c rotational parameterization. The numerical discretization of the underlying system of dierential algebraic equations is treated in detail. The proposed algorithm obeys major conservation laws of the underlying continuous system such as conservation of energy and angular momentum. In addition to that, the constraints on the con®guration and momentum level are ful®lled exactly. Two numerical examples are dealt with to assess the performance of the constrained algorithm.