Interactive virtual prototyping of a mechanical system considering the environment effect. Part 2: Simulation quality

Perhaps the three most important issues in numerical simulation of mechanical systems are: (1) how well do the multi-body systems represent a physical system of interest: (2) how efficient is the simulation: and (3) how accurate is the simulation. With the advances in computational mechanics, the efficiency of multi-body simulations is steadily improving. Indeed, analysts are increasingly envisioning real-time simulation. With these improvements in computation and efficiency, the modeling of physical systems is also improving through the ability to have more comprehensive modeling. The issue of accuracy, however, remains. Generally, the complexity of multi-body system dynamics leaves the analyst without firm assurance about the numerical accuracy short of experimental verification or intuitive reasonableness of the results. In the second part of the paper we present some methods and experiments to clarify simulation quality of the basic model described in the first article. (C) 2011 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.