A modeling of sliding joint on one-dimensional flexible medium

The dynamic modeling of a sliding joint on a one-dimensional medium, such as a cable or a beam, is studied in this paper. The sliding joint is implemented by positioning it at a moving node on the one-dimensional medium, which is realized by variable-length elements at either side of the joint. The variable-length element is established with an absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) in the framework of the Arbitrary Lagrange-Euler (ALE) description. The sliding of the joint is described by the increasing of the length on one side of the one-dimensional medium and a corresponding decreasing of the other side. In order to capture the discontinuity of the slopes at the position of the sliding joint, the moving node has two slopes as generalized coordinates which are equal to each other in the case of a beam but not in the case of a cable, and in order to avoid the addition-deletion constraint, the node adjacent to the moving node is added or deleted if the element is too long or too short. The governing equations for the coupled system are derived in terms of D'Alembert's principle and the resulting equations of motion are formulated in the standard form of differential algebraic equations of multibody systems. Numerical examples are presented to validate the method proposed by comparing with analytical results which are available or are made possible by simplifying the model.