Simplified modelling for mechanical systems

SimMechanics is a suite of tools for engineering design and simulation of mechanical systems within the Simulink environment.

SimMechanics is a suite of tools for engineering design and simulation of mechanical systems within the Simulink environment.

The release of SimMechanics from The MathWorks provides a major innovation for control designers modelling mechanical systems.

SimMechanics and Simulink allow engineers to model a physical plant and simulate the controller in one environment.

SimMechanics enables improved communication and collaboration between separate working groups such as mechanical engineers and control system engineers.

With the ability to model both mechanical systems and their controllers in Simulink, the time and expense to build controllers for mechanical systems is dramatically reduced.

The MathWorks has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from its SimMechanics customers.

"Before we learned about SimMechanics, we set out to model the dynamics of a six degree of freedom satellite and estimated our development time to be about three weeks", said Marc Schafer, senior aerospace engineer.

"Using SimMechanics, we built a model of the satellite and designed the controller.

This took us no more than 4-5h.

The results were astounding".

SimMechanics provides controls engineers in the automotive, aerospace, robotics, industrial equipment and manufacturing industries with new capabilities for the model-based design approach.

For example, using SimMechanics engineers can analyse their designs early in the design cycle, allowing them to evaluate the performance of the system, make adjustments, and eliminate problems before committing to a detailed design.

As a result, cost-savings and optimised development cycles are realised.

"In today's competitive marketplace, engineers are designing increasingly complex and sophisticated controllers for mechanical systems".

said Gavin Walker, Principal Engineer at The MathWorks.

"Now, market pressures mandate shorter development times with improved product safety and reliability.

SimMechanics allows engineers to model and simulate their designs at the beginning of the design cycle.

Then, they can test the behaviour of their controllers with an accurate mechanical model.

This ability to simulate the mechanical model with the control system reduces the need to build costly physical prototypes".

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