An overview of strategies to address numerical errors in forward dynamics of constrained multibody systems

[Excerpt] In this work, several strategies used to solve the equations of motion for dynamics of constrained multibody systems are examined in terms of computational performance. In this process, the formulation of the equations of motion under the framework of multibody systems is revisited. For that, the Newton-Euler methodology is used due to its simplicity and easiness to develop and implement, in which the algebraic constraint equations are incorporated in the formulation by employing the Lagrange multipliers technique. The resulting equations of motion are constituted by a set of differential algebraic equations that must be solved during the dynamic analysis of the multibody systems. This study aims at investigating the performance of approaches to control the constraint violations and strategies to handle the problems of redundant constraints and singularities. Several multibody models are utilized to assess the performance of the different strategies and scenarios. This study can be useful in offering guidelines to select a suitable strategy to deal with the resolution of the equations of motion in multibody dynamics. [...]