An ideal homokinetic joint formulation for general-purpose multibody real-time simulation

This work presents a compact formulation of an ideal homokinetic joint, suitable for implementation in multibody simulation. This type of joint is widely used in machinery design, and significantly in the helicopter industry to alleviate the moments transmitted by the rotors to the airframe in modern tilting rotor aircraft designs. When simulating the dynamics of complex mechanical systems, the accurate description of the kinematics can be of paramount importance. General-purpose multibody simulation software usually allow enough generality to model arbitrary kinematics to the desired level of accuracy. However, in some cases, the kinematics of complex joints can only be obtained by combining a considerable number of basic building blocks, often resulting in unnecessarily large models. When minimizing the size of the model is mandatory, as in real-time simulation, dedicated kinematic components that synthesize complex joints without reducing the fidelity of the motion description may help. The advantages of the proposed formulation are shown by illustrating how it improved the capability to simulate the dynamics of a tiltrotor wind-tunnel model in real-time.

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