An Efficient Method for Synthesis of Planar Multibody Systems including Shape of Bodies as Design Variables

A point contact joint has been developed and implemented in a joint coordinate based planar multibody dynamics analysis program that also supports revolute and translational joints. Further, a segment library for the definition of the contours of the point contact joints has been integrated in the code and as a result any desired contour shape may be defined. The sensitivities of the basic physical variables of a multibody system, i.e. the positions, velocities, accelerations, and reactions of the system with respect to the automatically identified independent design variables may be determined analytically, allowing design problems where the shape of the bodies are of interest to be handled in both a general and efficient way.