How Do Rigid Body Dynamics Analyses Work in CAD/CAE?

[CameronRose]

Hi folks,

This week I have a question about rigid body dynamics analyses in CAE. This is in relation to the final year project of my degree. Over the past few months I've been working with AnSys 18.1 for FEA however, I've reserved AnSys exclusively for static analyses. For rigid body dynamics analyses I have stuck to using the Mechanism application within CREO 3.

I'm aware that AnSys would likely give more control over analysis settings and aspects like meshing however, I've carried on with CREO as I'm much more familiar with their platform and the results that it has given me have matched up almost exactly to my analytical method using free body diagrams.

My question is how do rigid body dynamics analyses work? In CAE is rigid body dynamics a type of FEA or are the two entirely different in method? If it's a different thing then does rigid body dynamics essentially just automate the calculation of the same vectors that I have done by hand?

Apologies if I'm asking the wrong question or it's too vague, just trying to get a better understanding of what's actually going on when I run an analysis.

Cameron

 

[Alloymouse]

Hey Cameron,

I'm no expert in this, just dabbled with some FEA in SolidWorks and other simulation software for a couple of years, so if anyone comes along feel free to correct me. From experience, it seems like the main distinguishing factor between static and dynamic is just the function of time and how variable your variables are (haha). The software does calculations for every element at every point in time, so it's essentially doing static FEA through time. As far as I know, it's kinda like how pictures and videos differ.

Cheers, and all the best for your FYP!