Coordinate FEM Formulation for Boom of Crawler Cranes Dynamic Analysis

A simple formulation to treat flexible multi-body dynamic systems is developed by the finite element method. The proposed formulation does not use the displacement concept. Velocity, acceleration and strain are achieved directly from nodal co-ordinate, not displacements. The proposed methodology is based on the minimum potential energy theorem. A non-dimensional space is created and the relative curvature and fibers length are calculated for both reference and deformed configurations and used to directly compute the strain energy at general points. The back-tipping behavior for the boom of crawler crane is analyzed by the proposed formulation regarding the influence of sudden unloading. The results are compared with other authors' numerical solutions. It is shown demonstrating the accuracy and possibilities of the formulation, mainly for multi-body applications.