Analysis of 2D flexible mechanisms using linear finite elements and incremental techniques

In this paper, a fully linear method for the kinetoelastodynamic analysis of mechanisms of engineering praxis, characterized by large displacements and rotations (rigid body motion) but small elastic displacements and strains, based on the standard Euler-Bernoulli finite elements is proposed and investigated. The method is a co-rotational approach and relies on the principle to decompose the motion of a mechanism in a series of successive time steps, so small that the linear finite element method can be applied within each step, adding a correction procedure in order to compensate errors resulting from not incorporating the exact (non-linear) beam theory. After presentation of the method, we apply it to test cases well known in the literature and discuss its characteristics.