Abstract
This paper describes a new analytical method of simulating the vibration behavior of spatial serial manipulators composed of multiple elastic links. The adjacent link joint method is proposed to calculate the internal forces and moments acting interactively between two adjacent elastic links, which are connected with an offset and a spatial twist angle. The position and posture of the adjacent link joint between the two adjacent links are determined by solving a system of linear equations, namely the equilibrium equations of forces and moments acting on the joint; then the internal forces and moments are calculated. The free and transient vibrations of a spatial 2-link manipulator were analyzed and experimentally examined. The calculated natural frequencies and vibrational accelerations agreed well with the measured values.
