Planar Multibody Dynamics Simulations image

Planar Multibody Dynamics Simulations

Project Overview

Creating a general purpose simulation software for planar multibody dynamics in MATLAB.

Skills Used

MATLAB Multibody Dynamics Numerical Methods

GitHub

A general purpose simulator for the kinematics and dynamics of two dimensional multibody systems.

Heavily inspired by the work of Javad N. Nikravesh, Planar Multibody Dynamics. I started it as part of a course on multibody dynamics in my university Hoschule Rhein-Waal, but I have since continuously improved it. Unlike Nikravhesh, this project uses the MATLAB symbolic toolbox to generalise formulations and also increases the accuracy of calculations at a marginal decrease in speed.

🔧 Current Features

  • Core functions for dynamics using the body coordinate formulation
    (see the Functions/ directory)
  • General-purpose scripts for simulating multibody systems
    (see the BC_Formulation/ directory)
  • Example simulations of two mechanisms from Nikravesh’s text

📦 Requirements

  • MATLAB R2018b or later
  • Symbolic Math Toolbox

🚧 Future Work

  • Implementation of kinetic analyses (e.g., forward and inverse dynamics)
  • Additional examples and validation cases
  • More Animations

📚 References

Nikravesh, J. N. (2007). Planar Multibody Dynamics: Formulation, Programming with MATLAB®, and Applications. CRC Press. —