Introduction

The major goal of the engineering profession is to design and manufacture marketable products of high quality. Multibody mechanical systems range from the very simple to the very complex. Classical methods of analysis in mechanics have relied upon graphical and often quite complex techniques. The graphical process provides a visual understanding of the kinematics of a system. A classical analytical formulation for kinematics of planar mechanisms is known as the vector-loop method. The slider–crank and double pendulum examples demonstrated that a multibody system could be formulated in different ways. Analytical methods for formulating the equations of motion and numerical methods for solving them are the basis for developing computer programs to determine the response of a multibody system. A special-purpose program is a computer code that deals with only one particular multibody system, for example, a slider–crank mechanism. In contrast to a special-purpose program, a general-purpose program can analyze different multibody systems without requiring any changes to the program.