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MYSHANET is a best practice PST - ESPRIT project funded by the European Commission (Esprit - HPCN contract no 97 051 EP 26 441 ) and is one of the associated activities of Notsomad TTN.
This project aims at porting on network of PC the HIPERCOMBATS
tools and improves some of its capabilities.
General framework
The use of numerical simulations for the design of new mechanisms is a key component to reduce the time to market and then enhance the competitiveness of small and medium size enterprises that manufacture complex mechanical systems. Those companies do not have large computing facilities but rather network of PCs that are often used as multipurpose machines. The multi-body simulation is nowadays a well-established technique to help in the study of new mechanical systems. This technique is the so-called virtual prototyping methodology. At the present time, several general purpose programs for kinematic and dynamic analysis of multi-rigid body systems are available on the market, that are not design tools but rather analysis tools. Analysis programs can perform the simulation of a system once its geometric and inertial characteristics have been designed. However, in the design problem, the desired response of the system is known and the designer wants to find out the values of the design parameters that better satisfy the design requirements. To solve this problem, the designer needs to know how changes on the parameters affect the system behaviour. In this complex task, analysis programs can be used to perform several simulations of the same mechanical model for different sets of values of the design variables. If an intensive parametric study were to be carried out by one of the existing codes, it would take some days of continuous work for one engineer on a powerful workstation, who should define the model for each set of the input parameters, run the simulation and review the results. Hence, the use of a software tool that incorporates capacities to define, analyse and visualise parametric simulations of multi-body systems will help the designer to overcome those difficulties. The aim of this project is to port on heterogeneous network of non dedicated computers, that include both PC and UNIX platforms, the existing parallel design software tool HIPERCOMBATS. This is a computer program that allows to carry out in a working day a complete parametric study of a complex multi-body system, such the suspension system of a ground vehicle. This project will benefit from the code HIPERCOMBATS developed jointly by CEIT, CERFACS and Piaggio on UNIX platforms in the framework of a previous HPCN project.
More informations on European Projects can be found on the
Prosoma Web server
January 16, 1998
18 months
