A GENERAL-APPROACH TO STRESS STIFFENING EFFECTS ON FLEXIBLE MULTIBODY DYNAMIC-SYSTEMS

This paper presents a general way of including stress stiffening effects in the dynamic simulation of flexible multibody systems that undergo large overall motion accompanied by small elastic deformation. Stress stiffening terms are derived from the internal virtual work that includes nonlinear terms of the strain-displacement relationship and reference stresses induced by existing loads before deformation. The resultant stress stiffness matrix for a flexible body is obtained through quasi-static structural analyses by applying D'Alembert inertia, joint reaction, and other applied loads. The D'Alembert inertia loads arising from gross motion of the body reference frame are expressed as a combination of space-dependent terms and 12 sets of time-dependent terms. An iterative method is proposed to solve the resultant system equations of motion. Examples are presented to illustrate the method and procedures proposed.