Null Space Method of Differential Equation Type for Motion Analysis of Multibody Systems

The governing equations of multibody systems are, in general, formulated in the form of differential algebraic equations (DAEs) involving the Lagrange multipliers. For efficient and accurate analysis, it is desirable to eliminate the Lagrange multipliers and dependent variables. Methods called null space method and Maggi’s method eliminate the Lagrange multipliers by using the null space matrix for the constraint Jacobian. In previous reports, one of the authors presented methods which use the null space matrix. In the procedure to obtain the null space matrix, the inverse of a matrix whose regularity may not be always guaranteed. In this report, a new method is proposed in which the null space matrix is obtained by solving differential equations that can be always defined by using the QR decomposition, even if the constraints are redundant. Examples of numerical analysis are shown to validate the proposed method.