This book collects some of the best papers from the 2007 ECCOMAS Conference in Multibody Dynamics, held in Milan, Italy. It is a unique window onto the state of the art in this rapidly growing field of research, with its wide range of industrial applications.

Multibody Dynamics is an area of Computational Mechanics which blends together various disciplines such as structural dynamics, multi-physics - chanics, computational mathematics, control theory and computer science, in order to deliver methods and tools for the virtual prototyping of complex mechanical systems. Multibody dynamics plays today a central role in the modeling, analysis, simulation and optimization of mechanical systems in a variety of ?elds and for a wide range of industrial applications. The ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Multibody Dynamics was ini- ated in Lisbon in 2003, and then continued in Madrid in 2005 with the goal of providing researchers in Multibody Dynamics with appropriate venues for exchanging ideas and results. The third edition of the Conference was held at the Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy, from June 25 to June 28, 2007. The Conference saw the participation of over 250 researchers from 32 di?- ent countries, presenting 209 technical papers, and proved to be an excellent forum for discussion and technical exchange on the most recent advances in this rapidly growing ?eld.

The ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Multibody Dynamics is an event which takes place every two years and which attracts the best researchers in multibody dynamics in the world. A publication collecting the most important and influential papers provides a unique opportunity to present to a broad audience the state of the art in this field. Springer has published a similar collection for the two previous editions of this series of conferences, namely the one of 2003 in Lisbon and the one of 2005 in Madrid. A similar book for the 2007 conference in Milan creates a book series which accompanies the conference series, something which is not presently available in the multibody dynamics community. In fact, although also the ASME organizes a multibody conference in the USA which is well attended, there is not a similar book series accompanying that conference.

Inhalt
Physiological Methods to Solve the Force-Sharing Problem in Biomechanics.- Multi-Step Forward Dynamic Gait Simulation.- A Fast NCP Solver for Large Rigid-Body Problems with Contacts, Friction, and Joints.- Solution Procedures for Maneuvering Multibody Dynamics Problems for Vehicle Models of Varying Complexity.- Synthesis and Optimization of Flexible Mechanisms.- The Reverse Method of Lines in Flexible Multibody Dynamics.- A Nonlinear Finite Element Framework for Flexible Multibody Dynamics: Rotationless Formulation and Energy-Momentum Conserving Discretization.- A Second Order Extension of the Generalized? Method for Constrained Systems in Mechanics.- Kinematical Optimization of Closed-Loop Multibody Systems.- A Comparison of Three Different Linear Order Multibody Dynamics Algorithms in Limited Parallel Computing Environments.- Linear Dual Algebra Algorithms and their Application to Kinematics.- A Memory Based Communication in the Co-simulation of Multibody and Finite Element Codes for Pantograph-Catenary Interaction Simulation.