Use mechanism to simulate trayectory given by equation

Jan 20, 2004 2 Replies

Hello all,



I would like to simulate a parabolic movement (one piece thrown and that moves with gravity), and I have a bucket elevator (buckets moving between two sprokets) moving with uniform velocity. I want to see when an how this piece impacts to the buckets.



Somebody has any idea to to that. (I have made all the algebra, I have the equations of movement, and when is the impact, but I would like to have a visual and more complete analysis). Is mechanism useful for that ??. First how to simulate the movement of buckets fixed to a chain that moves between two wheels, and then how to simulate the movement of the particle ??



Thanks in advance.


I'm glad to find someone really ambitious, someone who wants to push the software to the limits and use it to solve problems. Beware, though, trying to use it to cheat on your DYNAMICS tests ~ those teachers will know. When I found out about some of the stuff Pro/e and Mechanica could do, I started dreaming about going Hollywood ~ you know, just blowing s*it up: all out tractor pull and ripping stuff apart to see what it could take, popping the heads off bolts, twisting metal, friction welding. Well..... it can't really do all that, not real-time, anyway. Mostly, it still comes down to setting up more simplified problems, like they do in Statics classes.

Since you have the numbers already, you need your bucket suspended between two points on some kind of cross section and some kind of force on the bucket, maybe even a gravity component (to stess your 'chains'). Since you have the trajectory, mass of object thrown, acceleration, final speed, angle of trajectory, you can easily resolve this into a static problem which Pro/MECHANICA can solve. Just pick a point on the bucket for applying a load, using your momentum values, and give it a force vector based on the trajectory. You might add the bucket movement into the force of projectile to allow the bucket to be suspended, motionless.

Of course, this misses the excitement, glitz and glamor of firing projectiles at moving buckets (video game?), but makes for a simpler engineering problem.

David Janes

Use MDO to simulate this. You can set up the buckets mechanism and then give the ball a set of initial conditions such as postion and velocity and it will react according to gravity.

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