SimMechanics 3.0

Product Description

• Introduction and Key Features
• Modeling Mechanical Systems
• Simulating and Analyzing Mechanical Motion
• Exporting CAD Assemblies from a CAD System into SimMechanics
• Converting SimMechanics Models to C Code
• Multidomain Physical Modeling in MATLAB and Simulink

Simulating and Analyzing Mechanical Motion

By simulating your SimMechanics model, you can impose kinematic constraints, apply forces and torques, and measure the resulting motions and forces. You can also develop and test actuators, such as electric motors, ball screws, hydraulic cylinders, and engines.

SimMechanics adds to Simulink solver technology designed for simulating mechanical systems. It supports four motion analysis modes:

• Forward Dynamics: Assigns driving forces and torques to the motion-driving actuators and calculates the resulting motions of the entire system
• Inverse Dynamics and Kinematics: Determines the forces and torques that the actuators must exert to produce user-specified motions
• Trimming: Identifies the steady-state equilibrium points to be used for linearization and system analysis
• Linearization: Extracts a linear model that predicts the system’s response to perturbations in driving forces, joint and constraint configurations, and initial conditions

These modes of analysis enable you to test mechanical performance, select proper actuation systems, and develop optimal controls.

SimMechanics automatically creates a 3-D visualization of your mechanical model that can be animated during the simulation. The geometry in the visualization can be generated from the coordinate systems defined in your model, or you can attach realistic 3-D geometry to the bodies in your model. In addition, ellipses representing the mass and inertia of each part can be displayed to help you understand your system.

You can save the animation produced during simulation to a separate file so that you can view it independently of the simulation. You can enhance the visualization using all standard MATLAB® graphics functions.