Object-oriented modelling of general flexible multibody systems

This paper presents a general approach to object-oriented modelling of flexible multibody systems, based on the floating frame of reference (FFR) formulation. The data describing a flexible body can be computed analytically, having defined its shape functions matrices, or calculated by several finite element method (FEM) packages as a result of a modal analysis. By the proposed approach, a modular model is then obtained in an object-oriented language, namely Modelica. This allows to integrate very realistic descriptions of distributed flexibility in multidomain models, with significant advantages for a variety of simulation studies. After describing the general methodology, the paper presents some simulation results, to validate the approach with respect to benchmark cases considered in the literature.