Deployment analysis of a solar panel array as a demonstration of a new superelement formulation in multibody dynamics

The floating frame of reference formulation is a commonly applied method in flexible multibody dynamics. The method requires Lagrange multipliers to enforce kinematic constraints between the bodies. To avoid the use of Lagrange multipliers, the authors have published a new formulation. This new formulation starts from the floating frame formulation. With a newly developed coordinate transformation, the floating frame degrees of freedom are converted into absolute nodal interface coordinates. Coupling of bodies in the interface points is similar as in the finite element method and the number of unknowns in the equations of motion are reduced to the degrees of freedom in a selected set of interface points. In this article, this new formulation is used to solve the transient deployment of a stacked solar panel array. Whereas earlier validations of the method were performed with two interface points per flexible body, the flexible bodies in this study have up to four interface points.