A NUMERICAL METHOD FOR DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF VEHICLES MOVING ON FLEXIBLE STRUCTURES HAVING GAPS

A numerical method is presented for the dynamic analysis of vehicles moving on flexible structures which contain gaps. The Lagrange multipliers associated with the kinematic constraints of the vehicle components and the contact forces between the rigid wheels of the vehicle and the flexible structures are simultaneously computed with the solutions of the equations of motion by using the iterative schemes. On the kinematic joints and on the possible contact points the velocity and acceleration constraints as well as the displacement constraints are satisfied by the monotone reductions of the corresponding error vectors. And a well-developed simple one-step time integration of ordinary differential equation is employed for the solution of the equations of motion. Convergences of the iterative schemes are analysed and numerical simulations are conducted. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.