This paper demonstrates a method for automatic generation of the linearised equations of motion for mechanical systems. Unlike conventional methods for generating linearised equations of motion in ‘MCK’ form, the method allows for the analysis of systems with nonholonomic constraints, and allows linearisation around non-zero speeds. With this method, the algebraic constraint equations are eliminated after the linearisation while the resulting system is already written in first order form. The method has been successfully applied to an assortment of problems of varying complexity. It has been implemented in the MATLAB R/Octave programming language, under the title ‘EoM’, and is freely available under the GNU General Public License on the author’s website. It can easily generate eigenvalue or frequency response plots for a number of systems of interest to the vehicle analyst. (Author/publisher) For this paper, other papers and posters presented at this Symposium see http://bicycle.tudelft.nl/bmd2010/
Abstract