<p>Tethered systems, which are multi-body systems in which plural components and bodies are connected via flexible tethers, are currently used for space and deep-sea explorations. However, to perform accurate work with such tethered systems, the ability to analyze, comprehend, and anticipate tether movements is crucial. Furthermore, since it is difficult to carry out experiments in such environments, numerical analyses are beneficial for helping users grasp tether motions. When considering the behavior of a system in which a tether cable is used, it is first necessary to consider environmental boundary fluctuations. Generally speaking, the use of the nonlinear finite element method (FEM) known as an absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF), is effective in dynamic flexible body simulations. Additionally, by applying a variable-domain finite element (VFE) to an ANCF (VFE-ANCF), it is possible to express the motion of a flexible body with time-varying length. However, in conventional methods like VFE-ANCF, there are problems such as decreasing analysis accuracy and increasing calculation costs when considering environmental boundary fluctuations. Accordingly, we had proposed an advanced method, named variable boundary-VFE-ANCF (VB-VFE-ANCF), which avoids these problems by virtually considering one tether as a multibody system in which two flexible bodies are combined. The numerical results shows that within a certain range, the method allows calculations involving variable boundaries to be performed while maintaining accuracy levels comparable with conventional methods.</p>

Evaluation of Numerical Approaches on Flexible Body Motion With Time-Varying Length and Moving Boudary

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2021/volume/85369

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