General Purpose Vehicle System Dynamics Software Based on Multibody Formalisms

This paper pursues two objectives: Firstly, to review the state-of-the-art of general purpose vehicle system dynamics software and secondly, to describe two representatives, the program MEDYNA and the program NEWEUL. The general modeling requirements for vehicle dynamics software, the multibody system approach and a comparative discussion of multibody software are given. The two programs NEWEUL and MEDYNA are described with respect to modeling options, computational methods, software engineering as well as their interfaces to other software. The applicability of these programs is demonstrated on two selected examples, one from road vehicle problems and the other from wheel/rail dynamics. It is concluded that general purpose software based on multibody formalisms will play the same role for mechanical systems, especially vehicle systems, as finite element methods play for elastic structures.