• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.24 no.9 s.180
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• pp.2266-2273
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• 2000

Equations of motion of a multi-beam system undergoing overall rigid body motion are derived by employing finite element method. An orientation angle is employed to allow the arbitrary orientation o f the beam element. Modal coordinate reduction technique, which has been successfully utilized in the conventional linear modeling method, is employed for the present modeling method to reduce the computational effort. Different from the conventional linear modeling method, the present modeling method captures the motion-induced stiffness variations which are important for the dynamic analysis of structures undergoing overall rigid body motion. The numerical results are compared to those of a commercial program to verify the reliability of the present method.