Modeling Flexible Bodies with Simscape Multibody

For MATLAB users on R2018b and later releases, the following flexible body blocks in Simscape Multibody™ are recommended.  

• General Flexible Beam, starting in R2018b, for modeling slender beams with general cross-sections
• Reduced Order Flexible Solid, starting in R2019b, for importing data from finite element software
• Flexible beams with standard cross-sections, starting in R2020a, including Flexible Rectangular Beam, Flexible Cylindrical Beam, and other blocks 
• General Flexible Plate, starting in R2021b, for modeling thin plates with general midsurfaces

Learn about these blocks in this blog post:
Modeling flexible bodies using the Reduced Order Flexible Solid block

For MATLAB users on R2018a and earlier releases , the technical paper below explains two workaround approaches for approximately modeling deformable bodies. One method is targeted at beam-like structures, while the other enables importing flexible body data from finite element software.