• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.77-84
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• 2003

Virtual work in multibody systems is frequently expressed as the inner product of the virtual displacement and the resultant force at the centroid. But provided that the resultant force is converted into the equipollent forces there is no restriction on where the analysis reference point is placed. There are basically three candidate points : the centroid, joint point and the instant global origin. The traditional fully recursive formulation uses the centroid, but the present work verifies that the instant global origin always shows better efficiency (e.g. 86% CPU time of the centroid for quarter car model) and joint point shows the efficiency between that of the centroid and the instant global origin. A discussion on how important it is to define the analysis reference point properly in a fully recursive formulation is also presented.