ADAMS/Engine powered by FEV

What's New

Auto-plugin capability

A Plugin Manager has been added for the 2003 release. The Plugin Manager is an extremely useful tool that allows you to select all of the plugins you want to load or unload at one time. You have the choice of loading plugins for just a single session or every time, automatically, at startup.

See the What's New for ADAMS/View or ADAMS/Car for additional details.

Converting a version 12.0 database to version 2003

ADAMS/Car 2003 allows both ADAMS/Driveline and ADAMS/Engine as plugins to ADAMS/Car. This increases your vehicle model's fidelity by adding detailed engine and powertrain subsystems. This also allows you to create a complete Functional Digital Vehicle.

Because of the plugin changes, it was necessary to rename the shared databases for ADAMS/Car, ADAMS/Engine, and ADAMS/Driveline. In version 12.0, ADAMS/Car, ADAMS/Driveline, and ADAMS/Engine had the following database aliases and names that were stored on disk:

Product: Database alias: Database name on disk:

ADAMS/Car ‹shared› shared_car_database.cdb

ADAMS/Driveline ‹driveline› driveline.cdb

ADAMS/Engine ‹shared› shared_engine_database.cdb

For version 2003, we have standardized the shared database names for all three products. The table below shows the changes:

Product: Database Alias: Database name on disk:

ADAMS/Car ‹acar_shared› shared_car_database.cdb

ADAMS/Driveline ‹adriveline_shared› driveline.cdb

ADAMS/Engine ‹aengine_shared› shared_engine_database.cdb

Because of these changes, you must modify all existing user databases that reference the new MSC.ADAMS distributed databases. Below are instructions on how to modify user databases using a python script provided with version 2003.

To modify user databases:

Note: We recommend that you save your files before each database conversion.

From the Tools menu, select Database Management, then Version Upgrade and Shared Database Alias as shown next.

If you are running ADAMS/Engine with an unconverted CDB, it assumes that any ‹shared› reference should be ‹aengine_shared›, so you can immediately use existing databases.

If you are a Functional Digital Vehicle user, you will need to convert the databases so there is no confusion between the ADAMS/Car ‹shared› and the ADAMS/Engine ‹shared› CDBs.

Saving templates, subsystems, and assemblies

Saving templates, subsystems, and assemblies has changed for this release to be more compliant with the industry standard behavior. Selecting Save from the File menu now immediately saves the file using common defaults (binary for templates, and TeimOrbit for subsystems and assemblies). Save As was changed to make the renaming optional and should now be used to access the consolidated set of save options.

A Target Database option has been added to the Template, Subsystem, and Assembly Save As dialog boxes, which allows you to specify where the files should be written, thereby resolving a common mistake of saving a file to the wrong database. The default writable database setting serves as the default value for this option.

Chain and belt wizard

Introduced new wizards to generate chain and belt templates more easily. You use a wizard to automatically create an entire template of a chain, including the sprockets, chain, guides, and tensioner. Optionally, it creates the virtual test rig as well. Most importantly, the sometimes difficult to specify communicators are now generated with the appropriate minor role and matching name as part of this process.

ADAMS/Engine powered by FEV plugin

ADAMS/Engine is now a plugin into the template-based product environment. Together with the ADAMS/Car and ADAMS/Driveline plugins, it constitutes the Functional Digital Vehicle. You can now seamlessly integrate ADAMS/Engine cranktrain templates into a full-vehicle assembly including a drivetrain template from ADAMS/Driveline to perform events such as clutch-misuse or to study the vibrations in the vehicle excited by the combustion forces of the engine. We introduced communicators that interface the cranktrain templates with the vehicle. All elements required by the SDI interface are supported, most importantly the throttle demand.

Gas-force throttle position

To support the Functional Digital Vehicle, the gas force now also supports the input of throttle position. This means that ADAMS/Solver calculates the gas pressure by interpolating from the gas pressure tables based on the current value for crank angle, crank velocity, and throttle position.

Improved cranktrain static solution with engine torque map

This feature is beneficial not only from the Functional Digital Vehicle perspective, but also with respect to the standard cranktrain analysis in ADAMS/Engine. It allows for finding more realistic loading in the cranktrain during the static solution, including the reaction forces in the engine mounts.

Template documentation

All of the templates in the shared database are now documented, providing information about communicators, parts, UDEs, and so on (see the Templates tab in the ADAMS/Engine online help).

Single valvetrain templates prepared for cam generation

All single valvetrain templates in the shared database now contain all the required elements, such as the kinematic cam-follower connections, to allow you to switch the single valvetrain model from being dynamic to kinematic. Therefore, you can generate the cam profile based on a given valve lift input.

Curve viewer slope and memory

The curve viewer has the option to view the slope of a curve. This helps to determine if the given data produce a continuous derivative as required by ADAMS/Solver.

Linux operating system support (ADAMS/Engine solver only)

ADAMS/Engine adds support in the 2003 release for the Linux operating system. At this time, the support is limited to solver only. The graphical user interface portion of the product is not yet supported on Linux. We will add support for the ADAMS/Engine interface in a future release.

Please see the Hardware and Software specifications, provided with your distribution and available on the MSC.Software Web site, for further details.

Hydraulic Lash-Adjusters/Tappets

ADAMS/Engine now includes a new Hydraulic Lash-Adjuster Type 3 component, which models a hydraulic lash-adjuster with the check valve positioned in the piston and the check valve spring closing the valve.

We updated the force formulations to improve the force balance of the pressure forces within the hydraulic lash-adjuster components. For details, see the Knowledge Base Article 10403.

We also made enhancements to the hydraulic lash-adjuster components to enable you to:

Model a hydraulic lash-adjuster that has leakage to atmospheric pressure rather than to supply pressure.
Change the damping coefficients of the springs in the hydraulic lash-adjuster and the impact coefficients of the check valve. For details, see the Knowledge Base Article 10402.

To give you more control, the hydraulic lash-adjuster components now have a parameter that lets you hold the pressure level during a static simulation.

Although the supply pressure is only used by the hydraulic lash-adjuster components, it is now required by all tappets, including rigid, spring-damper, and nonlinear spring-damper tappets, to make them compatible with each other. You can let ADAMS/Engine automatically create a suitable solver_variable input communicator for the supply pressure. You no longer have to use the hydraulic lash-adjuster component in the template to be able to save the supply-pressure settings of your assembly.

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Changes

Valve spring

The valve spring modeling approaches have been altered to produce higher-quality results.

In the past, the multi-mass spring has been used as a fast model, which was validated against test data. It required some parameter tuning to obtain good results. This version is still supported so that formally tuned spring property files can still be used while producing the same results as they did in the past. When modifying a multi-mass spring, you can select which version of the implementation to use, if the spring originated from an old version file.

The flex spring has been improved so it compensates for the cross-section area that is lost because of the faceted geometry of the element mesh. This resulted in improvements in terms of mass and stiffness calculation of the individual flexible bodies of the detailed model of that spring.

With the improvements, the results obtained with the two approaches track to test data more closely and compare better when using the same parameters.

Improved database search control

You can turn the database search on and off with the environment variable MDI_CDB_SEARCH=yes/no (no is the default).

Initial-condition CONSUB

Merged the initial-condition CONSUB, which is used to calculate proper initial conditions in the system by activating a number of constrains, performing an initial condition, and then deactivating these constraints, with a similar CONSUB in ADAMS/Driveline. Therefore, we introduced a more generic scheme for setting up the initial-condition arrays.

These arrays are created based on a naming convention such that every motion or joint primitive that has a name starting with IC_ is automatically considered in this process.

Initial-condition array

The initial-condition array, which had to be set manually before switching to ADAMS/Insight or ADAMS/Vibration in the 12.0 Service Pack release, is no longer required. This is now done automatically based on naming conventions.

Waterfall plot

The waterfall plot is now generated based on the new 3D surface plot feature in ADAMS/PostProcessor. You can easily change the axis attributes (such as grids, labels, and limits) shade the surface, and perform other modifications by selecting the entity on the treeview. To position or orient the plot you can use the mouse or the keys known from the modeling window to fit or zoom. By selecting Shift + t you can even create a typical 2D Campbell diagram.

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Issues resolved

36144
Warning regarding hand-edited flex spring property files.
Added a warning to avoid confusion with regard to flex-spring section information in hand-edited files.

36222
Outline matrix in sprocket.
The outline matrix describing the user-defined profile is now automatically oriented properly, even when you enter it in reverse order. This fixes a problem with the contact force.

37833
HLA check valve oil flow uses wrong unit of pressure.

23116
Tappet supply pressure.
The supply pressure selection has been disabled in the Standard Interface.

36983
Enable specification of angle increment or points for cam generation.

36160
Torsional connector function units.
A warning has been added to remind you to check your stiffness and damping
values if you corrected the values instead of the function. A workaround was provided in the Knowledge Base Article 10126.

30445
You can now define the damping of the beam crankshaft directly.

37000
The files associated with a flexible crankshaft are now properly published to the target database. This includes the .mnf file.

36990
In certain configurations, the T-belts wrapping did not work.

36941
If a conrod is switched from inertia method user-entered to density, the center_of_mass marker lost its parameterization. The cm marker was never referenced again.

36172
Involute sprocket geometry crash.
If the center of the pin used for the "Over 2 Pin Diameter" measurement went below the base radius, the calculations would be wrong, the geometry created was very ugly and the complete session would crash. This was fixed by adding a check for the input.

35765
Renaming an entity did not update the request name in version 11.0 and 12.0.

39854
Switching the order of gears referenced by a gear force created circular dependencies of the gear orientation.

39053
The spline gear force calculations were not correct in ADAMS/Engine 12.0 Service Pack. The gear pitch radii were mixed up, and the torque and tangential force results did not match.

39051
For helical three-phase gear forces and spline gear forces, the tangential force result set component were reporting the sum of the tangential force and axial force. This has now been corrected to report resulting force tangential to the gear pitch circle as documented in the dialog box help.

29428
The request solver subroutine used by the generic spring was not accessible in ADAMS/Engine (dispatcher id 0904). The subroutine has now been included.

36410
The request solver subroutine used by the joint motion actuator was not accessible in ADAMS/Engine (dispatcher id 0909). The subroutine has now been included.

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Known issues

Please go to the Knowledge Base to read all of the Known Issues for ADAMS/Engine 2003

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Revised: 09/06/05