Multibody systems with flexible beams

Abstract

Flexibility effects in multibody dynamics certainly represent one of the most arduous aspects of the modeling of mechanical systems. There are several reasons for this. First of all, contrary to the rigid case, flexible bodies require both physical and geometrical hypotheses (e.g.: elastic linear behavior, small flexible motion, ...) whose validity must be questioned a posteriori as regards the accuracy or even the meaningfulness of the simulation results.