Compared with traditional linear elastic materials, the soft structure composed of incompressible hyperelastic materials has not only geometrical nonlinearity but also material nonlinearity during deformation. In this paper, the absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) is used to study the large deformations and large overall motions of incompressible hyperelastic curved beams. A novel large deformation dynamic modeling method for curved beams made of hyperelastic materials is proposed, in which a simplified Neo-Hookean model is combined with the onedimensional ANCF beam element. The elastic force vector is calculated according to the exact expression of curvature. The dynamic equations are derived by using the virtual work principle. The dynamic responses of a cantilever silica gel beam under gravity are calculated based on the present method and compared with those of the improved low-order beam element (ILOBE), high-order beam element (HOBE), and commercial finite element analysis software (ANSYS). Simulation results show that the proposed method can accurately describe the large deformation and large overall motion of the beam, and has better computational efficiency. Research in this paper provides an efficient dynamic model for the dynamics analysis of soft robot arms.

Compared with traditional linear elastic materials, the soft structure composed of incompressible hyperelastic materials has not only geometrical nonlinearity but also material nonlinearity during deformation. In this paper, the absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) is used to study the large deformations and large overall motions of incompressible hyperelastic curved beams. A novel large deformation dynamic modeling method for curved beams made of hyperelastic materials is proposed, in which a simplified Neo-Hookean model is combined with the one-dimensional ANCF beam element. The elastic force vector is calculated according to the exact expression of curvature. The dynamic equations are derived by using the virtual work principle. The dynamic responses of a cantilever silica gel beam under gravity are calculated based on the present method and compared with those of the improved low-order beam element (ILOBE), high-order beam element (HOBE), and commercial finite element analysis software (ANSYS). Simulation results show that the proposed method can accurately describe the large deformation and large overall motion of the beam, and has better computational efficiency. Research in this paper provides an efficient dynamic model for the dynamics analysis of soft robot arms.

Dynamic responses and vibration characteristics of a rotating functionally graded material (FGM) beam with a hollow circular cross-section in the temperature field are investigated in this paper. The material properties of the FGM beam are assumed to be temperature-dependent and vary along the thickness direction of the beam. By considering the rigid-flexible coupling effect, the geometrically nonlinear dynamic equations of a hub–FGM beam system are derived by employing the assumed modes method and Lagrange’s equations. With the high-order coupling dynamic model, the effect of temperature variations under two different laws of motion is discussed, and the free vibration of the system is studied based on the first-order approximate coupling model. This research can provide ideas for the design of space thermal protection mechanisms.