A Procedure for Modeling Multibody Systems Using Subsystem Models

Due to the increasing use of micro-processors to control multibody systems, the inclusion of both analogue and digital electronic components in multibody formulations has become one of the challenges facing the multibody community. Models of mechanical systems that incorporate these types of components are referred to as “mechatronic” systems, while multibody systems incorporating only analogue components are dubbed “electromechanical” systems. Traditional approaches to symbolically computing the governing equations for such systems can be time intensive and result in extremely complex equations. The following paper proposes a method for efficiently generating the governing symbolic equations for an electromechanical multibody system. The key to the proposed approach lies in exploiting the topology of a given system by applying subsystems derived using a newly developed extension to linear graph theory. Exploiting the topology in this manner accommodates parallel formulation strategies and helps to clarify and organise the system level models. Additionally, since the subsystem models are developed using a linear graph formulation, it is shown that they naturally combine with graph models of electrical subsystems to model electromechanical systems.