Off-road mobility vehicle development faces a wide range of challenges when it comes to testing design modifications and different maneuvers. In addition to having a high cost associated to any testing, the data generated is rarely reproducible and any modifications required after physical testing is done are highly expensive. EDEM allows for rapid virtual prototyping of vehicle designs, leading to faster design cycles and improved off-road vehicle safety.
Simulation files used in this example can be downloaded here:
Using Altair EDEM, automotive and defense industry OEMs can virtually test their vehicles in an almost infinite range of terrain types with repeatability through simulation. These tests can be done in a time and cost effective manner as seen in this example. In this case, EDEM has been coupled to Altair MotionSolve to model the dynamics of the vehicle to a high level of accuracy. By conducting the tests with this coupling, it also allows to obtain relevant information on the effect that the bulk material has on the vehicle components when the tires interact with the terrain.
To run this demo:
- HyperWorks Desktop 2022.2, Mechanical Solvers 2022.2 and EDEM 2022.2 needs to be installed in your machine (you can find this in the AltairOne Marketplace. Additionally, you will need PM FlexTire from the Altair Partner Alliance (https://altair.com/pm-flextire).
- Download the Pickup_FlexTire.zip from the start of this post and extract. Within this zip folder you will find the “SimulationFiles” folder within which, the files are organized into 6 subfolders.
- In the EDEM folder you will find the EDEM files, to open the EDEM simulation open the Pickup_FlexTire_MotionSolve-EDEM.dem file (EDEM Simulation Data, file type).
- The MBD model will be opened from the events folder using the event_RCD_snapshot.mdl file in Hyperworks (MotionView) .
- Then, the EDEM file needs to have the coupling interface open, which can be found in the EDEM toolbar. click on the following icon:
when the coupling server is open it will look like this after clicking it:
- The simulation job will be launched from HyperWorks with the MotionView session loaded when opening Hyperworks. To find out more about how to run MotionSolve-EDEM simulations check this e-learning: EDEM e-learning .
Since the release of EDEM 2022.2, these simulations are even faster with the possibility of using Dynamic Domain or PM-FlexTire (by Pratt & Miller) with the CUDA GPU solver. Allowing our users to maximize their off-road simulations speed using either of these features on a single or multiple NVIDIA GPUs.
If you want to check other MotionSolve-EDEM examples have a look at the following:
If it is your first time using EDEM, you can find the EDEM tutorials here: Altair EDEM Tutorials
And find out more about our e-learning courses here: EDEM E-learning courses