Co-Simulation of Multibody Systems with Contact Using Reduced Interface Models

Co-simulation techniques enable the coupling of physically diverse subsystems in an efficient and modular way. Communication between subsystems takes place at discrete-time instants and is limited to a given set of coupling variables, while the internals of each subsystem remain undisclosed and are generally not accessible to the rest of the simulation environment. In noniterative co-simulation schemes, commonly used in real-time applications, this may lead to the instability of the numerical integration. The stability of the integration in these cases can be enhanced using interface models, i.e., reduced representations of one or more subsystems that provide physically meaningful input values to the other subsystems between communication points. This work describes such an interface model that can be used to represent nonsmooth mechanical systems subjected to unilateral contact and friction. The dynamics of the system is initially formulated as a mixed linear complementarity problem (MLCP), from which the effective mass and force terms of the interface model are derived. These terms account for contact detachment and stick-slip transitions, and can also include constraint regularization in case of redundancy in the system. The performance of the proposed model is shown in several challenging examples of noniterative multirate co-simulation schemes of a mechanical system with hydraulic components, which feature faster dynamics than the multibody subsystem. Using an interface model improves simulation stability and allows for larger integration step-sizes, thus resulting in a more efficient simulation.