About MD Adams 2010

MD Adams 2010 Products

2 MD Adams
Adams/Car

Adams/Car
Adams/Car, part of the MD Adams 2010® suite of software, is a specialized environment for modeling
vehicles. It allows you to create virtual prototypes of vehicle subsystems and analyze the virtual
prototypes much like you would analyze the physical prototypes.
Using Adams/Car, you can quickly create assemblies of suspensions and full vehicles, and then analyze
them to understand their performance and behavior.
You create assemblies in Adams/Car by defining vehicle subsystems, such as front and rear suspensions,
steering gears, anti-roll bars, and bodies. You base these subsystems on their corresponding standard
Adams/Car templates. For example, Adams/Car includes templates for double-wishbone suspension,
MacPherson strut suspension, rack-and-pinion steering, and so on.
If you have expert-user access, you can also base your subsystems on custom templates that you create
using the Adams/Car Template Builder.
When you analyze an assembly, Adams/Car applies the analysis inputs that you specify. For example, for
a suspension analysis you can specify inputs to:
• Move the wheels through bump-rebound travel and measure the toe, camber, wheel rate, roll
rate, and side-view swing arm length.
• Apply lateral load and aligning torque at the tire contact path and measure the toe change and
lateral deflection of the wheel.
• Rotate the steering wheel from lock to lock and measure the steer angles of the wheels and the
amount of Ackerman, that is, the difference between the left and right wheel-steer angles.
Based on the analysis results, you can quickly alter the suspension geometry or the spring rates and
analyze the suspension again to evaluate the effects of the alterations. For example, you can quickly
change a rear suspension from a trailing-link to a multi-link topology to see which yields the best
handling characteristics for your vehicle.
Once you complete the analysis of your model, you can share your work with others. You can also print
plots of the suspension characteristics and vehicle dynamic responses. In addition, you can access other
users' models without overwriting their data.
 MD Adams 2010 Products 3
Adams/Car Ride

Adams/Car Ride
Using Adams/Car Ride, you can quickly create Adams/Car assemblies of suspensions and full vehicles,
including Adams/Car Ride-provided components important for ride quality, and then analyze them to
understand their performance and behavior.

The Adams/Car Ride components are:

• Monroe damper
• Hydromount
• Frequency-dependent bushing

You can analyze each component independently from other systems using a component test rig. You can
also use a parameter identification tool for the hydromount component, to quickly determine model
parameters that will accurately reproduce test data.
Using the Adams/Car Ride four-post test rig for four-wheeled Adams/Car vehicle models you can
simulate a vehicle traveling over a rough road or simulate a vehicle on a real four-post shaker test
machine. You can play displacement or force RPC III file data into the test rig, make your own bumps
with table-lookup functions and drive over them, or create and drive over a road-profile surface using a
mathematical model for generating road roughness. In the time domain, the four-post test rig also
supports sinusoidal sweeps (displacement, velocity, acceleration, or force) and arbitrary Adams/Solver
functions.
4 MD Adams
Adams/Chassis

Adams/Chassis
Adams/Chassis, part of the MD Adams 2010® suite of software, provides a complete analysis
environment for automotive Adams analysis. It does this by providing standard model types, two analysis
types, and post-processing. You run Adams/Chassis in conjunction with Adams/Solver and
Adams/PostProcessor.
 MD Adams 2010 Products 5
Adams/Controls

Adams/Controls
Adams/Controls, part of the MD Adams 2010® suite of software, is a plugin to MSC.Software’s
Adams/Car, Adams/Chassis, Adams/View, or Adams/Solver that helps you add sophisticated controls to
your Adams model. Adams/Controls lets you connect your Adams model to block diagrams that you've
developed with control applications such as Easy5® or MATLAB®.
Adams/Controls offers you the option of:
• Simulating the combined mechanical system and controller entirely within the controls
application.
• Simulating entirely within Adams.

Solving the controls equations with the control package and solving the mechanical system equations
with Adams
6 MD Adams
Adams/Durability

Adams/Durability
Adams/Durability, part of the MD Adams 2010® suite of software, extends the traditional test-based
durability design process into the virtual world. With Adams/Durability, you can simulate a durability
duty cycle and write out component load histories in or formats and drive a durability test rig using output
data in RPC III or DAC formats. You can visualize stress or detect hot spots in flexible or rigid
components, and you can improve component design by interfacing with fatigue life prediction
programs.
Some of the features of Adams/Durability are available as a demand-loaded library (DLL), while the rest
are available as a plugin to the various Adams interface or vertical products, such as Adams/View,
Adams/PostProcessor, and Adams/Car.
 MD Adams 2010 Products 7
Adams/Flex

Adams/Flex
Adams/Flex software is an add-on module to the MD Adams 2010® suite of software that lets you add
flexible bodies to your models to achieve more realistic simulation results. The Adams/Flex Help
explains how to add flexible bodies to the models you build in Adams. It contains both tutorial, overview,
and theory information on integrating and managing flexible bodies.
Although you can use Adams/Flex with Adams/Solver, we recommend that you use Adams/View
because it provides an easy-to-use interface that is built right into the Adams/View interface. Because of
Adams/View's advantages, the Adams/Flex Help focuses on how to use Adams/Flex with Adams/View.
For information on how to use Adams/Flex with Adams/Solver, see Flexible Body Modeling with
Adams/Solver.

Adams/Flex Help also assumes that you know how to run Adams/View or Adams/Solver. It also assumes
that you have a moderate level of finite element modeling proficiency. To use Adams/Flex, you need
access to a finite element analysis (FEA) program that interfaces with Adams so you can prepare a finite
element (FE) model for use with Adams and create a to be built into your Adams model.
8 MD Adams
Adams/Insight

Adams/Insight
Adams/Insight, part of the MD Adams 2010® suite of software, is a powerful design-of-experiments
software. Adams/Insight is a stand-alone product that also works with many other Adams products.
Adams/Insight lets you design sophisticated experiments for measuring the performance of your
mechanical system. It also provides a collection of statistical tools for analyzing the results of your
experiments so that you can better understand how to refine and improve your system.
Within the Adams analysis environment, there are conduits between Adams/Insight and the other Adams
products (for example, Adams/Car, and Adams/Chassis). These conduits streamline the process by taking
advantage of the inherent parametric strengths of the vertical application.
When these parametric applications are not accessible, you can use the Adams/Insight ASCII Conduit
(Adams/Insight ASC). It provides the power of a streamlined parametric investigation process for
systems that are defined by text files. For example, if you only have an .adm and .acf file of an analytical
Adams/Solver system, you could use Adams/Insight ASC to easily execute various Adams/Insight
investigation strategies. Adams/Insight ASC has an editor that enables you to import the ASCII files
(.adm, .acf) and turn them into ASC templates, which together define an ASC system.
Adams/Insight ASC is a general-purpose tool that helps you work with various analysis environments,
from your own or inhouse-developed applications to commercial applications which accept an ASCII
input deck.
 MD Adams 2010 Products 9
Adams/Mechatronics

Adams/Mechatronics
Adams/Mechatronics is a plug-in to Adams which can be used to easily incorporate control systems into
mechanical models. Adams/Mechatronics has been developed based on the Adams/Control functionality
and contains modeling elements which transfer information to/from the control system. For example,
using Adams/Mechatronics in Adams/Car, you can quickly create assemblies of vehicle systems
including control systems, and then analyze them to understand their performance and behavior.
Using Adams/Mechatronics you can create control systems with different level of complexity. You can
use function builder to build a simple control function. If you have your control system defined in a
control package such as Easy 5 or Matlab/Simulink, then you can perform a co-simulation between
mechanical model defined in Adams and control system defined in the control package. Alternatively,
you can generate the control system code as a dynamic link library file (a dll file in Windows, also known
as external system library or simply ESL file in Adams/Mechtronics) using the control package and then
do all calculation within Adams.
10 MD Adams
Adams/Postprocessor

Adams/Postprocessor
Adams/PostProcessor software is a powerful postprocessing tool that lets you view the results of
simulations you performed using other products in the MD Adams 2010® suite of software. The
Adams/PostProcessor Help explains the basics of using Adams/PostProcessor.
The Adams/PostProcessor Help assumes you know the basics of using Adams products. It also assumes
that you have a moderate level of knowledge about signal processing and that you have access to in-depth
references on it. For introductions to Adams products, see their getting started guides or Help.
 MD Adams 2010 Products 11
Adams/Solver

Adams/Solver
Adams/Solver is a powerful numerical analysis application that automatically solves the equations of
motion for kinematic, static, quasi-static, and dynamic simulations. You can use Adams/Solver to build,
test, and refine mechanical system models. You can then take your simulation results from Adams/Solver
into a graphical user interface, such as Adams/View, that lets you animate and optimize models,
automate the simulation process, and customize the interface to suit your particular needs
12 MD Adams
Adams/Tire

Adams/Tire
Adams/Tire software is a module you use with Adams/Car, Adams/Chassis, Adams/Solver, or
Adams/View to add tires to your mechanical model and to simulate maneuvers such as braking, steering,
acceleration, free-rolling, or skidding. Adams/Tire lets you model the forces and torques that act on a tire
as it moves over roadways or irregular terrain.
Adams/Tire is a set of shared object libraries that Adams/Solver calls through the Adams DIFSUB,
GFOSUB, GSESUB subroutines. These subroutines calculate the forces and moments that tires exert on
a vehicle as a result of the interaction between the tires and road surface.
You can use Adams/Tire to model tires for either vehicle-handling, ride and comfort, and vehicle-
durability analyses.
• Handling analyses are useful for studying vehicle dynamic responses to steering, braking, and
throttle inputs. For example, you can analyze the lateral accelerations produced for a given
steering input at a given vehicle speed.
• Ride and comfort analyses are useful for assessing the vehicle's vibrations due to uneven roads
with short wavelength obstacles (shorter than tire circumference), such as level crossings,
grooves, or brick roads.
3D contact analyses are useful for generating road load histories and stress and fatigue studies that require
component force and acceleration calculation. These studies can help you calculate the effects of road
profiles, such as pothole, curb, or Belgian block.
 MD Adams 2010 Products 13
Adams/Vibration

Adams/Vibration
Adams/Vibration is an MD Adams 2010 plugin for performing frequency-domain analyses. Using
Adams/Vibration, you can study forced vibrations within your Adams models. For example, you can
simulate driving an automobile over a bumpy road an measure its frequency response. Both inputs and
outputs are described in the frequency domain.

Using Adams/Vibration, you can:

• Analyze the forced response of a model in the frequency domain over different operating points.
• Include the effects of hydraulics, controls, and user-subsystems in the frequency analysis.
• Transfer your linearized model from Adams products to Adams/Vibration completely and
quickly.
• Create input and output channels for vibration analyses.
• Specify frequency domain input functions, such as swept sine amplitude/frequency, power
spectral density (PSD), and rotational imbalance.
• Create user-defined, frequency-based forces.
• Solve for system modes over frequency range of interest.
• Evaluate frequency response functions for magnitude and phase characteristics.
• Animate forced response and individual mode response.
• Tabulate system modal contributions to forced vibration response.
• Tabulate contribution of model elements to kinetic, static, and dissipative energy distribution in
system modes.
• Perform modal stress recovery of flexible bodies.
• Specify direct kinematic inputs.
• Export Mass, Stiffness and Damping Matrices of the linearized model to Nastran bdf file for
performing Modal and Frequency Response analysis of the full Adams model in the Nastran
environment.
• Plot Stress/Strain FRFs
14 MD Adams
Adams/View

Adams/View
Adams/View lets you build models of mechanical systems and simulate the full-motion behavior of the
models. You can also use Adams/View to quickly analyze multiple design variations until you find the
optimal design.
 MD Adams 2010 Products 15
Adams/View Function Builder

Adams/View Function Builder

The Adams/View Function Builder is a versatile tool inside of Adams/View, part of the MD Adams
2010® suite of software, that lets you write expressions, functions, and subroutines to define forces,
measures, and motion in Adams products. You can create and modify functions and parameterize values
for various entities.
16 MD Adams
Adams/View Function Builder
MD Adams 2010 Online Help
Welcome to the MD Adams 2010 Online Help System.
The Help system provides:
• Release Notes for each product
• Configuration information
• Getting Started guides for each product
• Online Help for all products

Note: It is recommened to use Internet Explorer 6.0 for best performance of the help system.

Navigating the Help System

The navigation panel on the left side of the Help window displays the help topics for each Adams product. If you
do not see the navigation panel on the left side, click the Show Navigation icon ( ). Click the closed book icon
( ) to expand, or the open book icon ( ) to collapse the entries beneath. Topics that display a question mark
icon ( ) contain no subordinate topics.

Use the Up ( ) and Down ( ) arrows to page forward and backwards through the help topics. Use the
browser Back ( ) and Forward ( ) buttons to view the history of visited help topics.

Synchronizing the Table of Contents

As you use navigate through the help system, conduct searches, or follow hypertext links, use the sync button
( ) to show your current location in the Help system. After clicking the sync button, the Contents tab is brought
to the front and the displayed help topic appears highlighted in the topics list.

Searching the Help System

To search for topics in the Help system, click on the Search tab in the Navigation panel. After entering one or more
words to search, the search panel returns a list of help topics for each product ordered according to their number
of relevant matches. Click on any search result to bring up that topic. In the Content frame, all matching words
appear highlighted.

Adding a Topic to the Favorites List

If you would like to bookmark a help topic, click the Favorites tab in the navigation panel and click Add. Then
click any topic from the Favorite’s list to return to that Help topic.

Printing a Help Topic

Every section of the Help system is available in pdf format. To access the corresponding pdf file, simply click the
pdf button ( ) located in the upper right corner of the Help window. Once displayed in the Help window, use
the print button to print the help content. Additionally you can use the print button ( ) provided with the Help
system to print the contents in the current help window.

Using Online Resources

The database icon ( ) located in the upper right corner of the Help window provides direct access to the MSC
website. You can find additional resources on the website including; product announcements, technical support
information, a knowledge base, and user forums.
Helpful Links
You may find additional information by clicking on the following links.
• Adams Knowledge Base
• Virtual Product Development Community
• Adams Website
16 MD R2 Adams Helpful links