Riccati Transfer Equations for Linear Multibody Systems with Indeterminate In-Span Conditions

The transfer matrix method for linear multibody systems is capable of providing precise solutions for the dynamics of various mechanical systems, but it may also suffer from numerical instability in some cases, where serial chains with a large number of mechanical elements are involved or high-frequency harmonic responses are computed. Combining such a transfer strategy with the Riccati transformation yields the Riccati transfer matrix method (RTMM), which can help improve the numerical stability. According to the existing method, the conventional transfer matrices of all the mechanical elements should be obtained first; in other words, the existence of conventional transfer matrices is a prerequisite for the application of the RTMM. Thus, it seems that the RTMM is incapable of performing the dynamics analysis of linear multibody systems with indeterminate in-span conditions due to the nonexistence of the corresponding conventional transfer matrices. Observe that, for any state variables with indeterminate input–output relationships, the complementary state variables (the complementary state variable of a displacement is the corresponding internal force and vice versa) are identically equal to zero, and that the dimension of the Riccati transfer equation is only half of that of the conventional transfer equation. It reveals that the Riccati transfer equations for the connection points associated with indeterminate in-span conditions can be formulated directly, and that there is no need to rely on the conventional transfer equation. Two numerical examples are simulated and the computational results are compared with those obtained by the finite element method, which verifies the proposed method.