Lagrangian Formulation of the Equations of Motion for Elastic Mechanisms With Mutual Dependence Between Rigid Body and Elastic Motions: Part II—System Equations

Abstract

The first step in the derivation of the equations of motion for general elastic mechanism systems was described in Part I of this work. The equations were derived at the elemental level using Lagrange’s equation and the generalized coordinates were both the rigid body degrees of freedom, and the elastic degrees of freedom of element ‘e’. Each rigid body degree of freedom gave rise to a scalar equation of motion, and the elastic degrees of freedom of element e gave rise to a vector equation of motion. Since both the rigid body degrees of freedom and elastic degrees of freedom are considered as generalized coordinates, the equations derived take into account the mutual dependence between the rigid body and elastic motions. This is important for mechanisms that are built using lightweight and flexible members and which operate at high speeds. A schematic diagram of how the equations of motion are obtained in this work is shown in Fig. 1 in Part I. The transformation step in the figure refers to the rotational transformation of the nodal elastic displacements (which were measured in the element coordinate system), so that they are measured in terms of the reference coordinate system. This transformation is necessary in order to ensure compatibility of the displacement, velocity and acceleration of the degrees of freedom that are common to two or more links during the assembly of the equations of motion. This final set of equations after assembly are obtained in closed form, and, given external torques and forces, can be solved for the rigid body and elastic response simultaneously taking into account the mutual dependence between the two responses.