VEHICLE DYNAMIC MODELING & SIMULATION: COMPARING A FINITE-ELEMENT SOLUTION TO A MULTI-BODY DYNAMIC SOLUTION

The dynamic response of two multibody systems, a planar mechanism and a spatial robot, are generated using an explicit time integration finite element code and a multi-body dynamics code. Comparisons are made of the dynamic solution including body motion, joint constraint forces, conservation of energy, and CPU time. While finite-element simulation offers accurate modeling of structural flexibility, multibody dynamic simulation demonstrates the capability to produce accurate and efficient results.