Co-simulation of large mbd, FEA and DEM system

Abstract

An extension to an existing co-simulation algorithm [1] is presented. The original algorithm allows co-simulation of a large multibody dynamics (MBD) system with a large finite elements analysis (FEA) model; the present extension consists of a force-displacement co-simulation with a discrete element method (DEM) system. The proposed algorithm implements a force-displacement approach where the MBD system steps first using approximations for the forces provided by the DEM model. The DEM model later simulates its model using prescribed displacements provided by the MBD system. As implemented in [1], there is no fixed communication interval. Each code (MBS, FEA and DEM) are free to take a simulation steps that fits well the current status of the numerical solution. The glue (master) code holds data at every step the co-simulationg codes take. Implementation details and discussion follow.