MD Adams
Multidiscipline Multibody Dynamics
MD Adams is a mechanical systems analysis software built on Hexagon’s multidiscipline (MD) CAE framework. MD Adams integrates mechanical components, pneumatics, hydraulics, electronics, and control systems technologies to enable engineers to build and test virtual prototypes that accurately account for the interactions between these subsystems.
Product manufacturers often struggle to understand true system performance until very late in the design process. Mechanical, electrical, and other subsystems are validated against their specific requirements within the systems engineering process, but full-system testing and validation comes late, leading to rework and design changes that are riskier and more costly than those made early on.
MD Adams improves engineering efficiency and reduces product development costs by enabling early system-level design validation. Engineers can evaluate and manage the complex interactions between disciplines including motion, structures, actuation, and controls to better optimize product designs for performance, safety, and comfort. Along with extensive analysis capabilities, MD Adams is optimized for large-scale problems, taking advantage of high performance computing environments.
With functionalities like Adams2Nastran export, MD Adams introduces bi-directional integration with MD Nastran that allows re-use of validated Adams models in Nastran to perform modal and frequency response analysis. Adams/Mechatronics easily incorporates control systems into mechanical models by dynamically linking an external system library from a controls application, such as EASY5 and MATLAB. Control system parameters can be quickly adjusted for evaluation and included in a design study for simultaneous optimization of both control system and mechanical system.
MD Adams interface makes it easy for even novice users to create complete, accurate mechanical models. A core package (Adams/View, Adams/Solver, and Adams/PostProcessor) allows you to import geometry from most major CAD systems or to build a solid model of the mechanical system from scratch. You build a system the same way you build a physical system – by creating and assembling parts, connecting them with joints and driving them with motion generators and forces. You can also give your Adams model parametric properties and initiate a set of parametric simulations to study design sensitivities.
With MD Adams/Car, engineering teams can quickly build and test functional virtual prototypes of complete vehicles and vehicle subsystems. Working in the Adams/Car environment, automotive engineering teams can exercise their vehicle designs under various road conditions, performing the same tests they normally run in a test lab or on a test track, but in a fraction of time.
Adams/Flex provides the technology to correctly include a component’s flexibility even in presence of large overall motion and complex interaction with other modelling elements. Greater emphasis has been placed these days on high-speed, lightweight, precise mechanical systems. Often these systems will contain one or more structural components where deformation effects are paramount for design analyses and the rigid body assumption is no longer valid. Adams/Flex allows importing finite element models from most major FEA software packages and is fully integrated with Adams package providing access to convenient modelling and powerful post-processing capabilities.
Durability testing is a critical aspect of product development and issues discovered late in the development cycle lead to project delays and budget overruns. Worse yet, “in service” failures lead to dissatisfied customers, safety issues, and warranty costs. Adams/Durability allows engineers to assess stress, strain or life of components within mechanical systems to design products to last. Direct access to physical test data in industry-standard file formats enables engineers to use loads data captured during tests, and to easily correlate simulation and testing results.
With Adams/Vibration, engineers replace physical tests on shaker devices with virtual prototypes. Noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) are critical factors in the performance of many mechanical designs but designing for optimum NVH can be difficult. Adams/Vibration allows engineers to easily study forced vibration of mechanical systems using frequency domain analysis.
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D2S International offers consultancy services using finite element software from HEXAGON (MSC Software).