Creation of a street sweeper multibody dynamics (MBD) model and verification by field tests

The door closing feel is directly experienced by the customer and is typically treated as a subjective functional attribute. Objective targets have also been identified and correlated with subjective feelings, even though the final sign-off happens based on subjective assessment. Door Closing is a complex function involving multiple subsystems, their behavior & interface across parts.

The ever-advancing digitization is being driven by the convergence of simulation, data, and HPC. While virtual methods, interoperable tools, and standardized interfaces become state of the art, the engineers and their management will play a significant role to break down silos and benefit from a Digital Thread. In this fireside chat, we will discuss the importance of people to unleash the potential of Digital Twins, how they can combine the different fields of product development and what is still missing to make the connection.

The Digital Twin concept is broadly applicable to all Altair customer base wanting to develop better products faster. We will explain how to maximize the value you can get from the Altair Platform for Digital Twins. We will illustrate how this solution helps diverse engineering teams develop better, more complex products faster by avoiding work in silos. This will include proven uses cases for the convergence of simulation and data.

For several years now, co-simulation between Multibody Dynamics (MBD) codes like MotionSolve and Discrete Element Method (DEM) software like EDEM has been used for many applications such as vehicles and material transportation. One missing link has been a realistic tire model that not only could interact with the soil material in a realistic way but also show the influence of varying tire pressure, change in contact area and pressure distribution over said contact area.

For very soft material such as deep mud with a high-pressure tire, using a rigid wheel is a decent approximation. But for tires on harder surface, this method has several short comings. For example, a rigid representation of the tire will have neglectable rolling resistance while the pressure distribution on a real tire has its peak well ahead of the centerline of the tire producing a resisting moment to the motion. The contact patch area will in reality not depend on sinkage, but the sinkage is dependent on the contact area that is dependent on load and internal pressure.

This presentation introduces the new PM-FlexTire model that is integrated in EDEM and will work with MotionSolve. Requirements for creating and correlating the tire model is presented together with several application examples on mud, clay and gravel beds.

Presented at the ATCx Heavy Equipment in May 2021.

Speaker: Jesper Slattengren, Technical Fellow, Pratt Miller

Duration: 20 minutes

G.S. Vidyaprakash presents how Lakshmi Machine Works Ltd. drives the design process with simulation. In his presentation First Time Right Machine Design with CAE Simulation, he discusses reliable simulation techniques to predict & prevent failure modes.

Controller strategy expert Lorenzo Moretti presents how to improve Cobot collaboration. In the context of virtual commissioning, he discusses how more meaningful controller design is possible with realistic plant models.

Benoit Pelourdeau presents how Stanley Robotics SAS drives the design process with simulation, to develop the world's first robotic car storage service. Learn from him how the interdisciplinary mechatronic product development team succeeds with accurate virtual prototypes.

Daniel Jauss, Application Engineer CAE, gives a Demo Sessions on Altair Simulation Solutions for faster evaluation of real-world machines, explaining how to improve system understanding with dynamic motion analysis to Identify real behavior of the machine assembly and Identify peak loads.

Christian Kehrer, Business Development Manager System Modelling, gives a Demo Sessions on Altair Simulation Solutions for faster evaluation of real-world machines, explaining how CNC control optimization is performed to realize toolpath error correction of a CNC milling machine, with system simulation and how more effective controller design with realistic plant models is realized.

Industry expert Dennis Baum presents how Weber Maschinenbau applies simulation, how simulation can be used along product lifecycle and which benefits arise to customers and internal processes.

In this presentation, MIRDC’s Bionic Intelligent Automatic Guided Vehicle (BI-AGV) is introduced. This “collaborative handling module” has three characteristics of wireless intelligence, flexible use and flexible movement. Through the wireless intelligent collaborative handling system, it can control several automatic guided vehicles (AGVS) in real time, and several vehicles can conduct remote control and serial connection to carry out handling tasks. At the same time, the 360-degree mobile omni-directional wheel design framework is adopted. It has the advantages of flexible use in the area where the traditional unmanned vehicle cannot run smoothly in the indoor narrow space.

The world is full of bulk and granular materials. From ores being mined, soil being excavated, rocks being conveyed, or powders being processed - over 70% of all industrial processes involve the handling or processing of these challenging materials.

Winning the innovation race for mechatronics products requires a tool set which can support a multi-disciplinary development process from early concept design up to in-service support.

These success stories illustrate how customers are leveraging Altair's Math & Systems technology for Model-Based Development to develop better products, faster. Simulations involve 3D, 1D, and/or 0D modeling approaches based on the integrated use of Altair MotionSolve™, Altair Activate™, and/or Altair Compose™.

With the prospect of increasing labor shortages among a wide variety of industries, combined with the significant costs of occupational injuries and the ever-increasing pressure to increase productivity, leading robotics company, Sarcos is in a unique position to deploy industrial robotics designed to increase productivity while eliminating injuries, by augmenting rather than replacing human workers. Chris Beaufait, COO of Sarcos, discusses the current robotics landscape, why automation is not the right solution to the problems industries are facing, how Sarcos and its product lineup - including the full body, fully powered Guardian XO exoskeleton - will play a critical role in defining the workforce of tomorrow, and his vision for the robotics industry over the next five to 10 years.

Presentation by Konstantin Arhiptsov & by Eitan Maler, Simulation Dept. IWI Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) at the ATCx in Israel, Netanya on October 30, 2019. These days, in IWI, complete multi physics simulation is an integrated tool in the development of any new product. The motivation is to completely simulate one or two firing cycles as close to reality. First step is the Multi Body Dynamics simulation to check all mechanism are synchronized and work properly. Second is the explicit simulations - calibrating the mechanical properties of the pistol, in that the springs, contacts, materials and gun powder properties based on one firing cycle. The following is to calibrate the Non Rigid Boundary conditions (NRBC’s). This calibration of boundary conditions which are not completely fixed is crucial to understanding the actual strains and stresses on the parts. One of the approaches was to use known data of the stiffness of arm and wrist, implementing this data into a HyperStudy model to compare and calibrate the results based on a slow motion capturing of a real firing. The results are promising, with high accuracy of the behavior compared to a real capturing of the shooting, up to the point of slider getting to the end of its move – where most of the kinetic energy transform into loads on the frame. The following steps will be to calibrate, using the same method, the return of the slider to it’s original position and perform more than one firing cycle.

Presenters: Rafael Morais Cunha, CAE Engineer in NVH, FCA Group & Frederico Luiz de Carvalho Moura, NVH CAE Leader, FCA Group

To make the driving experience more comfortable for passengers inside a vehicle compartment, in an increasingly shorter development cycle, predictive methods for the acoustic response characterization are used by vehicle engineering teams. The main purpose is to estimate the sound field in the car cabin. The FCA NVH team identified in Altair tools an excellent opportunity to develop a complete solution for acoustics simulation. Supported by the Altair technical team, new methodology was created to convert frequency domain analysis into actual sound waves. This method was used to study the NVH steady-state acoustic performances. And development is in progress to simulate an acoustic environment to reproduce all vehicle noises in operational condition. Using this methodology, it’s possible to virtually understand the acoustic behavior of vehicles, helping to make decisions in early design stages which could save design cost, time and also improve the driving experience for passengers.

Presenter: Christian Kehrer, Business Development Manager, Altair

This presentation discusses the multi-disciplinary evaluation of truck platooning, with the lead truck sending out acceleration, braking and steering signals for the following trucks to react accordingly. The benefits address safety requirements, fuel savings, traffic capacity and convenience. The presentation demonstrates why platooning requires a holistic approach in the sense of connecting different modeling and simulation methods for a virtual evaluation of this system of systems.

Presenter: Nino Michniok, Mechanical Engineering Student, University of Kaiserslautern

The first part of the presentation shows the detailed process of building the multibody system of an actuated exoskeleton in MotionView/MotionSolve (MV/MS). The required movements are transferred to the corresponding joints by “Motions”. By this the exoskeleton can Stand Up, Walk diagonally across the floor and Sit Down. In the second part the “Motions” in MV/MS are replaced by controllers (position control) whichdeliver a certain torque to actuate the exoskeleton. The main topic here is the implementation of the co-simulation between Activate and MV/MS. In the end the presentation gives a quick outlook of similar works at the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern in Germany.

Presenter: Dario Mangoni on behalf of Alessandro Tasora, Engineering Professor and Digital Dynamics Lab Leader, University of Parma

This presentation address the use of the Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) deep reinforcement learning algorithm to train a Neural Network to control a robotic walker and a robotic arm in simulation. The Neural Network is trained to control the torque setpoints of motors in order to achieve an optimal goal.

Presenter: Kaustubh Deshpande, Chassis Engineer, Nikola Motor Company

This presentation describes Nikola Motor’s progression of design maturity from 1D CAE to 3D CAD/CAE for chassis system engineering work on their electric trucks. This progression spans from Voice of Customer to Functional Requirements to Functional Deployment to Structural Deployment. Nikola Motor starts with a ‘First Principles’ model of their truck/trailer vehicle dynamics, then they perform system modeling & simulation with Altair Activate using quarter- and half-truck/trailer models. Block diagrams are created using both signal-based blocks and physical-based blocks (with Modelica). Through this methodical process, Nikola Motor is able to derive more and better insight earlier in their development process regarding important vehicle characteristics for their trucks – ranging from ‘yaw rate of the tractor for loaded vs. unloaded trailer’ to ‘full-trailer load distribution sensitivity due to fifth wheel location’. Work is in-progress to tighten the connection between their 1D CAE simulations in Altair Activate™ and their 3D CAE multi-body dynamics simulations.

Presenter: Ronald Kett, Technical Specialist, Altair

For a Stewart-Gough-Platform (Hexapod), various software tools were used to study and design highly dynamic hydraulic drives together with an overall system control. Calculation of Eigenfrequencies, control design and comparison, hydraulic system design, and overall simulation control were done in Altair Activate, the mechanics of the Stewart-Gough-Platform was taken from a CAD model into Altair Inspire Motion. The co-simulation between control + hydraulics and mechanics was performed using Activate and Altair MotionSolve. Altair HyperView and HyperGraph were used to analyze and visualize the results. With the highly integrated solutions, the results could be achieved within a very short time. The different types of models (linear/simplified/full mechanics/hydraulics) made it possible to start with fast development cycles and finally achieve reliable results.

Presenter: John Straetmans, Computer Engineering Student, University of Michigan

This project attempts to build an accurate real-time (RT) drone simulator through the full integration of a 1D functional model of a drone created in Altair Activate®, along with its corresponding geometry, into Unreal Engine via the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) standard. Then, VR, peripheral controllers, and other functionalities were added to the representation. This task was accomplished by modifying the Altair RT Vehicle Package, making it able to handle not just vehicles, but any system model located in an FMU for co-simulation, in this case a quadcopter model. Once the FMU containing the Altair Activate® drone model was successfully loaded into Unreal Engine, the tools provided by the application allow additional features to be added, such as VR support. By implementing an FMU, together with its geometry, into Unreal Engine, we can visually analyze the dynamics of the system to further verify the drone model and its performance. In the future, this integration process should be facilitated to automatically load any FMU following just a few steps.

Presenter: Dario Mangoni, Engineering Professor, University of Parma

In the modern car industry, the advent of hybrid and electric vehicle systems is driving radical changes in the car electronics and software, demanding more and more advanced controlling techniques. Self-stopping, self-starting, ultimately self-driving cars are nowadays possible, because of the multitude of sensors, controller units and actuators making the vehicles “smart”. To simplify and make the interaction between the user and the machine more and more intuitive and user-friendly, a much broader and deeper investigation of different use scenario combined with the human interaction and intervention is critical. In this context, higher-detailed vehicle models are required to provide a valid prototyping tool which can be reliably used to test innovative controlling strategies, such as testing with the Man-In-the-Loop. The Car Real-Time Modelica library proposed here aims at providing a highly valuable tool for the vehicle control system design and test. The key competitive advantages in this approach are in the Maple model-based compiler for supporting high-level of details modeling; the adoption of the Modelica language which allows a transparent and physical approach to the modeling activities and finally the Activate platform which offers real-time capabilities within an environment meant for the signal-based control design. To graphically validate the library results, a visualization framework for realistic real-time simulations that assures high-fidelity scenario in which to test user experience was also realized.

Presenter: Rajiv Rampalli, Sr VP in HyperWorks Core Development team, Altair

Altair’s products for multi-body system simulation (MBS) – MotionView, MotionSolve, and Inspire Motion – form a key component of multi-disciplinary system simulations. In this presentation, we will look back on several achievements this year, in the form of customer successes as well as recent enhancements to these products which significantly extend the depth and breadth of capabilities. Some of these application examples also involve connections from MBS to other Altair technology or to 3rd-party technology such as to Altair OptiStruct (for flexible bodies and light-weighting) and Altair Activate (for hydraulics) and EDEM (for discrete element modeling of bulk materials).

Presenter: Christian Kehrer, Altair [on behalf of Oliver Höfert, Simulation Engineer at Kampmann]

The increasing virtualization of engineering methods is inevitable. This also holds true for the design of systems that take care for the thermal well-being of humans, e.g. in buildings. If it comes to simulation of so-called HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) systems, very often high fidelity approaches like CFD are connected to it. In contrary, this contribution illustrates a 1D modeling approach of a heat exchanger in use of Altair Activate. The presentation explains the implementation of the NTU (Number of Transfer Units) method in a system simulation environment. This includes a short description of the approach itself as well as its current limits. Based on the implementation of a single cell, differing network configurations for the evaluation of use cases of varying complexity will be shown.

Presenter: Stefano Benanti, R&D materials engineer, Hutchinson

Battery cooling (BC) systems are frequently composed of several parallel branches, each leading to and away from a series of cooling plates. As a correct flow distribution in each branch and overall pressure drop are a key requirement from every customer, numerical computation is extremely important from the first stages of each project: the number of components and their dimensions have a relevant impact on the total cost and it is thus necessary to quickly provide results already in the Request for Quotation (RFQ) phase.The 3D computation of such cases, albeit feasible, takes a relevant amount of time and makes it more costly (both in terms of computational power and of necessary software licenses) to quickly provide results. The goal is then to develop a quicker method to provide results and allow for the necessary optimization cycles. Altair Activate® was chosen by Hutchinson to develop a library of ROMs representing different circuit components through which is possible to create 1D models able to respond quickly and precisely to such demands.

Ed Wettlaufer, Technical Manager Mechatronics Group, Altair [on behalf of NAVAIR]

Government solicitations for proposals, or RFPs, for aircraft and airborne systems require preliminary designs with enough fidelity to accurately predict performance, in order to prove the design's ability to meet the Governments performance requirements. Modern high-performance computing provides the leverage to execute previously expensive analyses in areas such as computational fluid dynamics. The results of these high order analyses can be used to populate parameters in 1D systems models which can be easily coupled to medium order models from other disciplines. These capabilities allow the design engineer to rapidly iterate to levels of model maturity and accuracy not achievable years ago, resulting in high levels of confidence in the designs performance predictions in unprecedented time. Moving forward, Altair engineers will employ Multiphysics and co-simulation to execute the Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase (EMD) for one subsystem of the preliminary design developed in the afore mentioned pre-acquisition phase.

Presenters: Ulrich Marl, Key Account Manager for Electric Vehicle Motor-Feedback Systems, Lenord+Bauer & Andy Dyer, MBD Sr Technical Specialist, Altair

This presentation shows a modeling process to quantify the position/speed sensor (e.g, encoder) effects on an e-motor, and corresponding control system for a concept traction motor similar to the Nissan Leaf. The integrated solution of the e-drive is carried in Altair Activate as a system builder, using other Altair solutions e-motor solutions in FluxMotor and Flux to generate data for the e-motor itself, as well as the optimal current values for the Field-Oriented Contoller. The inverter is driven with efficient space vector pulse width modulation. The integrated solution also supports different levels of modeling fidelity for the system components, for example for the e-motor where either direct co-simulation with Flux for detailed finite element analysis or a reduced order model (ROM) using look-up tables. In this way, sensor design parameters can be evaluated within an accurate system of the e-drive to improve performance and efficiency.

Presenter: Berker Bilgin, Assistant Professor of Engineering (ECE) at McMaster University and co-founder of Enedym Inc.

Electric motors in general, are made of certain parts, such as the stator, rotor, coils and magnets, and mechanical parts. These parts might look simple and bulky from the outside, however, the highly interrelated relationship between the geometry of these parts, characteristics of materials, and the way the current is controlled, defines the cost, size, efficiency, performance, and lifetime of the motor. In electric motor design, multidisciplinary aspects are highly interrelated. The effect of various parameters on the electromagnetic, thermal, and structural performance should be investigated together to come up with an optimized design. This is possible by developing the platforms where the multidisciplinary aspects are modeled in a software environment, as we are doing with Altair software.

Presenter: Michael Hoffmann, Sr Vice President of Math & Systems, Altair

In this presentation, Michael Hoffmann, Sr Vice President, shares the company’s vision & strategy for Altair’s Math & Systems tools for Model-Based Development – based on providing an open platform tightly connecting 0D to 1D to 3D modeling & simulation. At different stages of their product development cycles, engineers can model and simulate their increasingly complex products as multi-disciplinary systems by using equations, block diagrams, and/or 3D CAD geometry. His scope includes Altair Compose™, Altair Activate™, Altair Embed™, and Altair MotionSolve™ as well as the multi-body motion capabilities in Altair Inspire™. He also spotlights several recent success stories about customers who have used these technologies to drive innovation through simulation.

Achieving the targeted brand image in a short development cycle time with minimal or zero prototypes is a major challenge faced by EV companies. To overcome this challenge, Altair, HBK and Romax have jointly developed a simulation driven process coupled with capabilities to virtually experience the noise and vibration characteristics, giving engineers a way to obtain real time performance feedbacks as the vehicle is being developed. This joint presentation on the proposed NVH development process covers a wide range of topics, including benchmarking, target setting, full vehicle and motor gearbox simulation loadcases, troubleshooting, optimization and stochastic analysis, and playback of simulation results for subjective evaluations, with a number of new technologies representing the global best practice in sound and vibration design and development. Join us to explore ways to control the sound and vibration characteristics of the vehicle, achieve the right sound, and avoid common NVH pitfalls, while accelerating time to market utilizing and experiencing virtual NVH prototypes.

Rod Giles, Group Manager CAE & CAD presents at the UK ATC 2019. Royal Enfield has and is undergoing a massive transformation, not only in the sales and manufacturing departments, but also in the way the motorcycles are designed and developed. Leading the way in the development of all new motorcycle platforms is the use of advanced Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) tools. At Royal Enfield we use a wide array of different tools and techniques. The primary tool for model preparation and analysis is Altair Hyperworks. Rather than trying to cover the vast range of analyses carried out, today I will concentrate on some examples where advanced techniques have helped the design process including using smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) in explicit analysis to evaluate fuel tank integrity, using NVH director to evaluate and improve transfer path analysis (TPA) to aid the rider comfort, using topology optimisation to reduce mass and improve structural performance of engine and chassis components, and using MotionSolve to understand complex mechanism dynamics.

This presentation was given at the 2019 ATCx Multibody & System Simulation conference at the Altair Headquarters in Troy, MI.

This presentation was given at the 2019 ATCx Multibody & System Simulation conference at the Altair Headquarters in Troy, MI.

This presentation was given at the 2019 ATCx Multibody & System Simulation conference at the Altair Headquarters in Troy, MI.

This presentation was given at the 2019 ATCx Multibody & System Simulation conference at the Altair Headquarters in Troy, MI.

This webinar will introduce you to Altair Activate for control system design and the ease of solving real world problems with co-simulation between MotionSolve (multibody simulation suite) and Activate.

thyssenkrupp Elevator AG has presented the MULTI concept, the world’s first rope-free elevator. The drive is ensured by a linear electromagnetic motor. To enable an economically feasible operation, it is necessary that the total weight of the lift does not exceed a certain limit. Designing the overall system of the MULTI lift according to this weight specification is one of the major challenge for thyssenkrupp Elevator.

In this presentation, an overview of the partnership between thyssenkrupp Elevator and Altair, the chosen design partner since the early phase of development, will be introduced. Thereby, different aspects of the simulation driven design process will be highlighted, taking into account several tools throughout diverse stages of the development cycle.

Ride comfort analysis modeling and ride comfort evaluation done in Altair Compose and Altair MotionSolve.