ADAMS/Vibration  

Auto-plugin capability

The new Plugin Manager, that was added for the 2003 release, impacts how ADAMS/Vibration is loaded. The Plugin Manager 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. The Plugin Manager is accessed from the Tools menu.

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

Displacement, velocity, and acceleration input channels 

The actuators in ADAMS/Vibration have now been extended to allow specification of direct kinematic inputs. You can create input channels to define displacement, velocity, or acceleration (d/v/a) and use them in the customary way for frequency response analysis. This capability has been provided to further what was available in version 12.0, where only forcing function inputs were possible.

Input channels defined by state variables

In previous releases, the force developed by the actuator was always applied at an input channel location through an input marker. Now, you have the freedom to apply the force through a state variable. This enhancement has been implemented so you can apply input channels to a control system, for example.

Generally speaking, this feature is useful for models, which are an assembly of parts, force elements, joints, and so on, and one or more control elements represented by LSE/GSE/TFSISO entities. Vibration input channels can now be applied to LSE/GSE/TFSISO components in the model.

Inclusion of PSD cross-correlation terms

The PSD vibration actuators in past versions of ADAMS/Vibration did not allow for inclusion of cross-spectral terms in the PSD definition. For multi-input systems, these terms should not be neglected.

In this version of ADAMS/Vibration is possible to specify that different PSD input channels are in cross correlation with each other; the corresponding off-diagonal terms are automatically created for the frequency domain analysis. Additionally, the overall computational performance of multi-input PSD vibration analysis has been optimized.

Python interface for vibration analysis

A Python-based interface is now available which enables batch processing. It will perform the vibration analysis and optionally it can automatically create a command file for postprocessing in ADAMS/PostProcessor.

If you are not accessing the ADAMS/Vibration functionality through the ADAMS/View interface (for example, if you use ADAMS/Chassis), you may want to take advantage of this new feature.

The Python interface capability offers new opportunities, such as writing out results in .xml files that you define or using PyQt for your own simple interfaces. An example and more details can be found in Knowledge Base Article 10503.

Improved scaling for vibration animation

Finding the right scaling factor for vibration animations is now effortless with the introduction of a new Auto Scale option. Fine-tuning is also much easier; the translational and rotational scale factors have been consolidated into a single value and +/- buttons are provided for adjusting the value up and down.

In past releases you may have observed that parts/geometry undergoing rotational motion during vibration animation would tend to expand and contract. We now offer another scaling algorithm that may provide more aesthetically pleasing animations for those situations.

Versatile input channel selection for global frequency response

Previously, you had two options for choosing input channels for the frequency response function (FRF): FRF of one output channel due to the effect of one input channel or FRF of one output channel due to the effect of all input channels.

You now have a third option. You can calculate and visualize the frequency response function of one output channel due to the summed effect of selected input channels.