Variational multirate integration of constrained dynamics

Mechanical systems with dynamics on varying time scales, in particular those including highly oscillatory motion, impose challenging questions for numerical integration schemes. Tiny step sizes are required to guarantee a stable integration of the fast frequencies. However, for the simulation of the slow dynamics, integration with a larger time step is accurate enough. Small time steps increase integration times unnecessarily, especially for costly function evaluations. For systems comprising fast and slow dynamics, multirate methods integrate the slow part of the system with a relatively large step size while the fast part is integrated with a small time step. Main challenges are the identification of fast and slow parts (e.g. by separating the energy or by distinguishing sets of variables), the synchronisation of their dynamics and in particular the treatment of mixed parts that often appear when fast and slow dynamics are coupled by constraints. In this contribution, a multirate integrator is derived in closed form via a discrete variational principle on a time grid consisting of macro and micro time nodes. Variational integrators (based on a discrete version of Hamilton's principle) lead to symplectic and momentum preserving integration schemes that also exhibit good energy behavior. The resulting multirate variational integrator has the same preservation properties. An example demonstrates the performance of the multirate integrator for constrained multibody dynamics. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)