Analysis of high-frequency ANCF modes: Navier–Stokes physical damping and implicit numerical integration

This paper is concerned with the study of the high-frequency modes resulting from the use of the finite element absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) in multibody system (MBS) applications. The coupling between the cross-sectional deformations and bending and extension of ANCF beam and plate elements produces high-frequency modes which negatively impact the computational efficiency. In this paper, two new and fundamentally different approaches are proposed to efficiently solve stiff systems of differential/algebraic equations by filtering and/or damping out ANCF high-frequency modes. A new objective large rotation and large deformation viscoelastic constitutive model defined by the Navier–Stokes equations, widely used for fluids, is proposed for ANCF solids. The proposed Navier–Stokes viscoelastic constitutive model is formulated in terms of a diagonal damping matrix, allows damping out insignificant high-frequency modes, and leads to zero energy dissipation in the case of rigid body motion. The second approach, however, is numerical and is based on enhancing the two-loop implicit sparse matrix numerical integration (TLISMNI) method by introducing a new stiffness detection error control criterion. The new criterion avoids unnecessary reductions in the time step and minimizes the number of TLISMNI outer loop iterations required to achieve convergence. The TLISMNI method ensures that the MBS algebraic constraint equations are satisfied at the position, velocity, and acceleration levels, efficiently exploits sparse matrix techniques, and avoids numerical force differentiation. The performance of the TLISMNI/Adams algorithm using the proposed error criterion is evaluated by comparison with the TLISMNI/HHT method and the explicit predictor–corrector, variable-order, and variable step-size Adams methods. Several numerical examples are used to evaluate the accuracy, efficiency, and damping characteristics of the new nonlinear viscoelastic constitutive model and the TLISMNI procedure.