Multibody System for Virtual Prototyping

The Ground Systems (GS) business unit of BAE Systems Inc. develops and manufactures major ground combat vehicles for military. Because the development of ground-based combat vehicles is a complex process, it requires the coordinated effort of multiple engineering disciplines that include human factor engineering (HFE), product design, as well as modeling and simulation (M&S), to perform design analysis and to predict vehicle performance. In order to increase engineering efficiency and to reduce product development costs, GS has developed a virtual prototyping technology. Using this technology, it enables GS to perform vehicle design and requirement validation in a virtual environment prior to expensive and time consuming hardware prototyping. This technology also enables GS customers to be more involved in the product development cycle and makes the product development process more customer-centric. The development of this virtual environment requires integration of various technologies, including multibody dynamics, 3D computer graphics, networking, modeling and simulation, and the human-machine interface design. This paper describes how multibody system simulations are used in this virtual environment to support GS vehicle design in the areas of crew visibility studies, crew station design, vehicle interference checking, and electrical power management simulation.