Finite element formulation of flexible slider crank mechanism using local coordinates

The need for higher productivity has lead to the design of machines operating at higher speeds. At high speed the rigid body assumption is no longer valid and the links should be considered flexible. In this work a method which is based on Modified Lagrange Equation for modeling flexible mechanism is presented. The method posses a more computational efficiency for not requiring the transformation from the local coordinate system to the global coordinate system. Also an approach using the homogeneous coordinate for element matrices generation is presented. The approach leads to a formalism where the displacement vector is expressed as a product of two matrices and a vector. The first matrix is a function of rigid body motion. The second matrix is a function of rigid body configuration. The vector is a function of elastic displacement. This formal separation helps to facilitate the generation of element matrices using symbolic manipulations.