Integrated Design Approaches for Controlled Flexible Multibody Systems

Abstract

In industrial manipulators and machine tools modern lightweight designs result in low energy consumption and often allow high working speeds. However, undesired vibrations occur due to the flexibility of the bodies and the control of flexible multibody systems is often a challenging task. In order to achieve good end-effector tracking performance the mechanical design and the control design must be considered concurrently in the sense of an integrated design process. In this paper three different optimization based integrated design approaches for controlled flexible multibody systems are presented.1

Weakly and fully coupled methods for structural optimization of flexible mechanisms

“…Therefore, cycles between MBS analysis and static response optimization are needed to account for the effects of the design modification over the ESL. Reference [15] shows that doing so is identical to neglect the time dependency in the sensitivity analysis of (21).…”

“…Mathematical programming tools are used to solve the optimization problem (21). Gradient-based methods have been employed to solve large scale structural and multidisciplinary optimization problems with great success [10,24].…”

Structural optimization of multibody system components described using level set techniques

“…Indeed, significant coupling between vibration and component inertial properties plus the interactions between flexible components renders a complex design problem which suffers poor convergence if not treated properly. Seifried and Held (2011) use the fully coupled approach to optimize controlled flexible multibody systems. Durability-based constraints are considered in the fully coupled work of Tobias et al (2010).…”