Simulation projects with a symbolic multibody modeling software for students in Belgium and Ecuador

This paper describes a multibody simulation project, developed at the Universit catholique de Louvain and at the Universidad San Fransisco de Quito, as an additional "learning layer" for students in engineering. The projects are all based on the use of a symbolic multibody software for generating the equations of motion of real-world applications (usually vehicles). Pedagogically, the use of such software gives the student the opportunity to focus on more enriching aspects, namely: the analysis of a real-world application, the formulation of consistent hypotheses for the considered system, and the multidisciplinary activity at the basis of a complete simulation project (mechanics, numerical methods, computer science and CAD).