Energy analysis of flexible multibody systems with internal damping under impact condition

Analysis of multibody mechanical systems using computational dynamics has been greatly developed recently. When these systems operate at higher speeds and under impact conditions, the assumption that the links behave as rigid bodies does not lead to exact analysis and the energy dissipation due to the internal damping of flexible bodies can make considerable effect on the behavior of the system. This issue becomes more important under impact conditions. In this paper, considering the internal damping of the flexible coupler of a high-speed crank-slider mechanism under impact conditions, the effect of different parameters on the reduction of vibration – which is due to contact forces - is investigated using multibody system dynamics.
The internal damping of the coupler is described by Rayleigh’s proportional damping model. Having derived the constrained equations of motion by Euler-Lagrange augmented method, the effect of flexibility and internal damping is presented for the crank-slider mechanism with the flexible coupler under impact conditions. In addition, the effect of the material type on the internal damping and vibration reduction is carefully investigated.