Mechanical engineering, an engineering discipline born of the needs of the industrial revolution, is once again asked to do its substantial share in the call for industrial renewal. The general call is urgent as we face profound issues of productivity and competitiveness that require engineering solu tions, among others. The Mechanical Engineering Series features graduate texts and research monographs intended to address the need for informa tion in contemporary areas of mechanical engineering. The series is conceived as a comprehensive one that will cover a broad range of concentrations important to mechanical engineering graduate edu cation and research. We are fortunate to have a distinguished roster of consulting editors, each an expert in one of the areas of concentration. The names of the consulting editors are listed on the front page of the volume. The areas of concentration are applied mechanics, biomechanics, computa tional mechanics, dynamic systems and control, energetics, mechanics of material, processing, thermal science, and tribology. Professor Leckie, the consulting editor for applied mechanics, and I are pleased to present this volume of the series: Kinematic and Dynamic Simulation of Multibody Systems: The Real-Time Challenge by Professors Garcia de Jal6n and Bayo. The selection of this volume underscores again the interest of the Mechanical Engineering Series to provide our readers with topical monographs as well as graduate texts. Austin Texas Frederick F. Ling v The first author dedicates this book to the memory of Prof F. Tegerizo (t 1988), who introduced him to kinematics.

Mechanical engineering, an engineering discipline born of the needs of the industrial revolution, is once again asked to do its substantial share in the call for industrial renewal. The general call is urgent as we face profound issues of productivity and competitiveness that require engineering solu tions, among others. The Mechanical Engineering Series features graduate texts and research monographs intended to address the need for informa tion in contemporary areas of mechanical engineering. The series is conceived as a comprehensive one that will cover a broad range of concentrations important to mechanical engineering graduate edu cation and research. We are fortunate to have a distinguished roster of consulting editors, each an expert in one of the areas of concentration. The names of the consulting editors are listed on the front page of the volume. The areas of concentration are applied mechanics, biomechanics, computa tional mechanics, dynamic systems and control, energetics, mechanics of material, processing, thermal science, and tribology. Professor Leckie, the consulting editor for applied mechanics, and I are pleased to present this volume of the series: Kinematic and Dynamic Simulation of Multibody Systems: The Real-Time Challenge by Professors Garcia de Jal6n and Bayo. The selection of this volume underscores again the interest of the Mechanical Engineering Series to provide our readers with topical monographs as well as graduate texts. Austin Texas Frederick F. Ling v The first author dedicates this book to the memory of Prof F. Tegerizo (t 1988), who introduced him to kinematics.

This book presents suitable methodologies for the dynamic analysis of multibody mechanical systems with joints. It contains studies and case studies of real and imperfect joints. The book is intended for researchers, engineers, and graduate students in applied and computational mechanics.

The German Research Council (DFG) decided 1987 to establish a nationwide five year research project devoted to dynamics of multibody systems. In this project universities and research centers cooperated with the goal to develop a general pur pose multibody system software package. This concept provides the opportunity to use a modular structure of the software, i.e. different multibody formalisms may be combined with different simulation programmes via standardized interfaces. For the DFG project the database RSYST was chosen using standard FORTRAN 77 and an object oriented multibody system datamodel was defined. The project included • research on the fundamentals of the method of multibody systems, • concepts for new formalisms of dynamical analysis, • development of efficient numerical algorithms and • realization of a powerful software package of multibody systems. These goals required an interdisciplinary cooperation between mathematics, compu ter science, mechanics, and control theory. ix X After a rigorous reviewing process the following research institutions participated in the project (under the responsibility of leading scientists): Technical University of Aachen (Prof. G. Sedlacek) Technical University of Darmstadt (Prof. P. Hagedorn) University of Duisburg M. Hiller) (Prof.

This textbook – a result of the author’s many years of research and teaching – brings together diverse concepts of the versatile tool of multibody dynamics, combining the efforts of many researchers in the field of mechanics.

Dynamics of multibody systems is of great importance in the fields of robotics, biomechanics, spacecraft control, road and rail vehicle design, and dynamics of machinery. Many research problems have been solved and a considerable number of computer codes based on multibody formalisms is now available. With the present book it is intended to collect software systems for multibody system dynamics which are well established and have found acceptance in the users community. The Handbook will aid the reader in selecting the software system which is most appropriate to his needs. Altogether 17 research groups contributed to the Handbook. A compact summary of important capabilities of these software systems is presented in tabular form. All authors dealt with two typical test examples, a planar mechanism and a spatial robot. Thus, it is very easy to compare the results and to identify more clearly the advantages of one or the other formalism.

The ECCOMAS Thematic Conference Multibody Dynamics 2005 was held in Madrid, representing the second edition of a series which began in Lisbon 2003. This book contains the revised and extended versions of selected conference communications, representing the state-of-the-art in the advances on computational multibody models, from the most abstract mathematical developments to practical engineering applications.

Comprehensive, up-to-date and firmly rooted in practical experience, a key publication for all automotive engineers, dynamicists and students.

Large-scale mechanical systems such as automobiles consist of interconnected rigid and deformable components. These multibody systems present complex problems. This introduction to multibody dynamics emphasises flexible body dynamics. It discusses basic kinematics and dynamics, modeling, and newer computational techniques.

This enhanced fourth edition of Dynamics of Multibody Systems includes an additional chapter that provides explanations of some of the fundamental issues addressed in the book, as well as new detailed derivations of some important problems. Many common mechanisms such as automobiles, space structures, robots and micromachines have mechanical and structural systems that consist of interconnected rigid and deformable components. The dynamics of these large-scale multibody systems are highly nonlinear, presenting complex problems that in most cases can only be solved with computer-based techniques. The book begins with a review of the basic ideas of kinematics and the dynamics of rigid and deformable bodies before moving on to more advanced topics and computer implementation. The book's wealth of examples and practical applications will be useful to graduate students, researchers and practising engineers working on a wide variety of flexible multibody systems.