Abstract
In this paper we discuss the motion of a tethered system. We considered the tethered system consisting of a very flexible body (the tether) and rigid bodies at one end as our analytical model. A flexible body in planer motion is described using the Absolute Nodal Coordinate Formulation. The combination of flexible body motion and rigid body motion is performed and interaction between them is discussed. We performed experiments to investigate the fundamental motion of the tethered system and to evaluate the validity of the numerical formulation. We conducted experiment of the motion of the tethered system with a rigid body in microgravity space. The numerical solutions using the proposed methods for modeling and formulation for the tethered system are in good agreement with the experimental results.
