Contribution to symbolic analysis of deformable multi-body systems

The aim of this paper is to present the equations of motion of deformable multi‐body systems in a compact form which is suitable for symbolic generation. Particular attention is paid to obtaining the various equations corresponding to joint displacements and body deformations in a unified manner. A large number of common intermediate terms are identified and appropriately assembled in the final form of the equations; for the various applications, this simple consideration permits one to drastically save on the computational effort. This paper also presents the data which are necessary to completely formulate the problem when the body deformations are described by a linear elasticity model (obtained from a modal or finite element description).