• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.spc1
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• pp.461-472
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• 2005

A formulation for flexible multibody systems (MBS) is investigated, where rigid MBS substructures are coupled with flexible bodies described by a nonlinear finite element (FE) approach. Several aspects that turned out to be crucial for the presented approach are discussed. The system describing equations are given in differential algebraic form (DAE), where many sophisticated solvers exist. In this paper the performance of several solvers is investigated regarding their suitability for the application to the usually highly stiff DAE. The substructures are connected with each other by nonlinear algebraic constraint equations. Further, partial derivatives of the constraints are required, which often leads to extensive algebraic trans-formations. Handcoding of analytically determined derivatives is compared to an approach utilizing algorithmic differentiation.