Collocation Methods for the Investigation of Periodic Motions of Constrained Multibody Systems

The investigation of periodic motions of constrained multibody systems requires the numerical solution of differential-algebraic boundary value problems. After briefly surveying the basics of periodic motion analysis the paper presents an extension of projected collocation methods [6] to a special class of boundary Value problems for multibody system equations with position and velocity constraints. These methods can be applied for computing stable as well as unstable periodic motions. Furthermore they provide stability information, which can be used to detect bifurcations on periodic branches. The special class of equations stemming from contact problems like in railroad systems [22] can be handled as well. Numerical experiments with a wheelset model demonstrate the performance of the algorithm