A Detailed Derivation of the Velocity-Dependent Inertia Forces in the Floating Frame of Reference Formulation

In the case of complex multibody systems, an efficient and timesaving computation of the equations of motion is essential; in particular, concerning the inertia forces. When using the floating frame of reference formulation for modeling a multibody system, the inertia forces, which include velocity-dependent forces, depend nonlinearly on the system state and, therefore, have to be updated in each time step of the dynamic simulation. Since the emphasis of the present investigation is on the efficient computation of the velocity-dependent inertia forces as along with a fast simulation of multibody systems, a detailed derivation of the latter forces for the case of a general rotational parameterization is given. It has to be emphasized that the present investigations revealed a simpler representation of the velocity-dependent inertia forces compared to results presented in the literature. In contrast to the formulas presented in the literature, the presented formulas do not depend on the type of utilized rotational parameterization or on any associated assumptions.