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LMS Virtual.Lab Motion
Optimizing real-life performance of mechanical systems -
Manufacturers are pressured to deliver more complex products with increased quality in shorter development cycles. Engineering the performance of mechanical designs with traditional test-based development processes is no longer an option. The only valid alternative is evaluating functional performance attributes on a virtual prototype. LMS Virtual.Lab Motion enables engineers to effectively analyze and optimize real-life performance of mechanical and mechatronic systems, long before physical testing.
Improving product quality -
For engineers, the challenge is to guarantee that the dynamic performance of their mechanical systems matches the specifications. They need to make sure that numerous components interact and move as planned under real-life conditions, such as gravity and frictional forces. Virtual prototyping has to deliver the right answers on time and with the required accuracy to positively impact the development process. The best solutions are those that can be easily rescaled to support the various stages of the entire development process. Equally important is that these solutions assess the dynamic motion performance in light of all system requirements, including durability, noise and vibration.
Simulating real-life behavior -
LMS Virtual.Lab Motion is specially designed to simulate realistic motion and mechanical system loads. It offers
effective ways to quickly create and use multi-body models, efficiently re-use CAD and FE (Finite Element) models and perform fast iterative simulations to assess the performance of multiple design alternatives. Engineers can use its scalable models to execute conceptual kinematic studies during the earliest development stages, integrate test data, and run more detailed assessments at subsequent stages. Motion results can easily be used to drive subsequent analyses in LMS Virtual.Lab in order to perform concurrent cross-attribute optimization.
• Assess the real-life behavior of complex mechanical systems
• Generate accurate loads for structural analysis, durability and noise and vibration studies
• Analyze and optimize real-life performance of mechanical systems before prototype testing
An effective process to optimize design prior to physical prototyping -
Developing optimized mechanical systems before building and testing expensive physical prototypes requires accurate dynamic motion results. Kinematic modules in today’s CAD packages are unable to fulfill these needs because they are limited to motion range prediction and collision detection without compliance effects. LMS Virtual.Lab Motion, on the contrary, simulates dynamic system behavior by including factors like inertia, gravity, stiffness, damping and friction. It can deliver much more valuable engineering insights throughout the entire product development process. Fast iterative simulations that accurately predict dynamic motion and internal loads and stresses empower engineers to assess the real-life performance of multiple design alternatives.
All-inclusive model set-up -
When setting up the model, engineers start by importing or creating detailed CAD or wireframe geometry for the different components. They create constraints and connections between the components so that the complete system kinematics are described properly.
After this, engineers define the model and its environment further by including dynamics to accurately predict the loads in the system on a time-domain basis. This means that gravity, masses and inertias are defined as well as all forces between components, including stiffness, damping, contact, and friction. Implementation of those forces can be applied through a broad range of algorithms such as specific springs, dampers, bushings or contact elements that are very contextual. A force element could be as simple as a basic spring or as complex as a detailed tire.
Additional refinement modeling -
Basic modeling is enhanced with more detailed force representation. For example, when a body is not stiff enough to be considered rigid, engineers can represent the bodies as flexible. They can deform under high loads according to predefined mode shapes derived from the simulation itself or imported from test data. Intermediately, a long flexible body, such as a suspension stabilizer or a windturbine blade could be automatically substructured as a multi-beam to account for overall non-linear deformation of the body under loads. LMS Virtual.Lab Motion also includes detailed descriptions of tire forces, bushings, contact between flexible bodies, gear contact, beams, engine, combustion loads, hydrodynamic bearings or aerodynamic forces to name a few.
Solving and post-processing -
When the model is described accordingly, engineers can solve it and review the results simultaneously using both animation and graphing. To better understand the model’s behavior, engineers can improve the design in order to make it reach its performance targets, including related to loads and stress analysis.
When the model includes very specific and detailed controls and forces such as hydraulic, pneumatic and electro-magnetic, engineers can make use of the full mechatronic capabilities included in both LMS Virtual.Lab Motion and LMS Imagine.Lab AMESim using cosimulation.
Ease-of-use -
Dedicated tools have been further developed to facilitate analysts’ work and improve process efficiency. Dedicated application interfaces have been developed to help designers and analysts create a specific model much faster than by doing the same job manually. Vertical interfaces are layered on top of Virtual.Lab Motion to complete specific modeling and analysis setup tasks.
Besides dedicated verticals, LMS Virtual.Lab Motion lets users assemble a system modularly from existing subsystems. This way, subsystem departments at your company can work independently while remaining closely connected on the system level.
Integration -
The LMS Virtual.Lab package provides an integrated environment for seamless multi-attribute simulations. Thanks to system parameterization and associativity, engineers can troubleshoot and optimize models in a very simple and efficient way. When any change is made to a model parameter, it is automatically cascaded to produce updated results in the dynamic motion simulation as well as in the durability and NVH results. Moreover, a complete set of parameters can be changed in one single click thanks to the use of design tables. This saves time and error-prone effort in file transfer an updating, letting engineers spend more time in the actual analysis phase rather than in the modeling one.
Automation -
Another LMS Virtual.Lab Motion advantage is the ability to automate any repeated process thanks to VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) journaling and scripting. Engineers can automate a specific process by creating a dedicated GUI either within or on top of LMS Virtual.Lab Motion. This not only saves time by eliminating highly repetitive tasks, it puts the process emphasis on performance optimization of the design, rather than on performance analysis of the current design. |
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 Download the LMS Virtual.Lab Motion Brochure
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