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Making it All Work Together
Dynamic Designer/Motion allows users to see and study the full-motion
operational behavior of their complex CAD assemblies. The software
is built upon Mechanical Dynamics’ powerful ADAMS® dynamic solution
engine. Thousands of engineering teams from nearly every manufacturing
industry today rely on ADAMS software, making it the world’s most
widely used mechanical system simulation tool.
Assisting in the light two-seat helicopter’s design have been
the faculty and students of Moscow Aviazionny Institute, one of
Russia’s leading aerospace engineering schools, who have performed
preparatory research. The design team has been particularly concerned
with operations of three key helicopter control systems -- those
for controlling lateral motion, pitch (especially in dive recovery),
and pedal operations.
The velocity and force of the rotor linkages over time are
plotted on these graphs generated with Dynamic Designer/Motion.
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Optimizing performance of these systems continues to present tough
challenges. At the first stage of the design process, the team learns
required specifications for each helicopter unit, i.e., the final
required outputs including allowable forces, displacements, and
velocities. The team must then determine the needed strength and
stiffness of the unit’s individual parts. In this way, the designers
assure that all parts work together as efficiently and effectively
as possible in helicopter operations.
Using Dynamic Designer/Motion has greatly simplified the task of
determining load conditions for FEA studies of individual parts.
For example, the software has helped reduce the time needed to measure
the forces affecting details of the helicopter’s dive-recovery system.
Designers can also quickly define the displacements in a helicopter
unit’s construction, including all dynamic characteristics of the
assembly, and modify the geometry and motion characteristics parametrically
until a workable solution is found.
Working Faster, with Added Confidence
Members of the helicopter’s design team say, from past experience,
it would take five to 10 times longer if they had to manually perform
the tasks they’re now doing on the computer with Dynamic Designer/Motion.
And the team is not only working faster, they’re also benefiting
from being able to explore many "what-if?" design variations, validating
the accuracy of their simulation results in physical testing.
The helicopter engineers believe that calculating FEA stresses
and displacements based solely on assumed loads does not provide
the degree of confidence needed to move forward quickly on a design.
It’s the use of Dynamic Designer/Motion, they believe, that gives
them tangible data to truly optimize the design’s performance.
Dynamic Designer/Motion, being fully integrated within a single
window of the CAD systems, enables engineers to quickly and interactively
modify their designs and perform motion simulations within the standard
drawing file. There is no need for data translation, which preserves
model data integrity.
John Krouse is an industry consultant in CAD/CAM/CAE.
He has authored five books on the technology, as well as numerous
reports and articles on engineering software applica-tions and trends.
He is the former editor and publisher of Computer-Aided Engineering
and can be reached at Krouse Associates, Inc., 7310 Hollypark Drive,
Concord, Ohio 44060 USA, phone 440/354-5334.
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When
engineers at the AOOT M.L. Milya Moscow Helicopter Plant set out
to redesign the ten-seat Mi-2 Sokol helicopter, they used 3D CAD
and embedded Dynamic Designer/Motion simulation software as key
enabling tools. 