Sudden imposition of a massless-link constraint in multibody systems with structural components

A general approach for modeling the dynamics of an elastic multibody system subjected to a sudden imposition of constraints is presented. The formulation accounts for systems with interconnected rigid and flexible members. The types of suddenly imposed constraints considered by this paper are those representing a fixed relative displacement between two points on two different mechanical members of the system. The elastodynamic model utilizes the finite element method in conjunction with the generalized impulse-momentum principle. A numerical solution scheme is devised for the reduced order model by invoking modal transformation. The application of this technique to a numerical example is also discussed.