Efficient Solution of Maggi’s Equations

According to a recent paper (Laulusa and Bauchau, 2008, “Review of Classical Approaches for Constraint Enforcement in Multibody Systems,” ASME J. Comput. Nonlinear Dyn., 3(1), 011004), Maggi’s formulation is a simple and stable way to solve the dynamic equations of constrained multibody systems. Among the difficulties of Maggi’s formulation, Laulusa and Bauchau quoted the need for an appropriate choice (and change, when necessary) of independent coordinates, as well as the high cost of computing and updating the basis of the tangent null space of constraint equations. In this paper, index-1 Lagrange’s equations are first considered, including the not-so-rare case of having a singular mass matrix and redundant constraints. The existence and uniqueness of solution for acceleration vector and Lagrange multipliers vector is studied in a very simple way. Then, following Von Schwerin (Von Schwerin, Multibody System Simulation. Numerical Methods, Algorithms and Software, Springer, New York, 1999), Maggi’s formulation is described as the most efficient way (in general) to solve these index-1 equations. Next, an improved double-step method, which implements the matrix transformations of Maggi’s formulation in an efficient way, is described. Finally, two large real-life examples are presented.

Efficient Solution of Maggi’s Equations

According to a recent paper by Laulusa and Bauchau [1], Maggi’s formulation is a simple and stable way to solve the dynamic equations of constrained multibody systems. Among the difficulties of Maggi’s formulation, Laulusa and Bauchau quoted the need for an appropriate choice (and change, when necessary) of independent coordinates, as well as the high cost of computing and updating the basis of the tangent null space of constraint equations. In this paper, index-1 Lagrange’s equations are first considered, including the not-so-rare case of having a singular mass matrix and redundant constraints. The existence and uniqueness of solution for acceleration vector and Lagrange multipliers vector is studied in a very simple way. Then, following Von Schwerin [2], Maggi’s formulation is described as the most efficient way (globally speaking) to solve these index-1 equations. Next, an improved double-step method, which implements the matrix transformations of Maggi’s formulation in an efficient way, is described. Finally, two large real-life examples are presented.

Second-Order Systems With Singular Mass Matrix and an Extension of Guyan Reduction

The set of consistent initial conditions for a second-order system with singular mass matrix is obtained. In general, such a system can be decomposed (i.e., partitioned) into three coupled subsystems of which the first is algebraic, the second is a regular system of first-order differential equations, and the third is a regular system of second-order differential equations. Under specialized conditions, these subsystems are decoupled. This result provides an extension of Guyan reduction to include viscous damping.