Consistent and Inertia-Shape-Integral-Free Invariants of the Floating Frame of Reference Formulation

The conventional continuum-mechanics-based floating frame of reference formulation involves unhandy so-called inertia-shape-integrals in the equations of motion, which is why, commercial multibody software codes resort to a lumped mass approximation to avoid the evaluation of these integrals in their computer implementations. This paper recaps the conventional continuum mechanics floating frame of reference formulation and addresses its drawbacks by summarizing recent developments of the so-called nodal-based floating frame of reference formulation, which avoids inertia shape integrals ab initio, does not rely on a lumped mass approximation, and exhibits a way to calculate the so-called invariants, which are constant “ingredients” required to set up the equations of motion, in a consistent way.