This paper was produced for the 2019 NAFEMS World Congress in Quebec Canada

Resource Abstract

This paper presents a new capability in MSC Nastran which offers end-to-end support of AVL EXCITE™ which is a popular software for the simulation of rigid and flexible multibody dynamics (MBD) of powertrains in automotive industry. The MSC Nastran-AVL EXCITE™ Interface can directly export an EXB file which is used by AVL EXCITE™ to model flexible components in multibody systems (MBS). After conducting the MBD simulation its results can be imported into MSC Nastran for efficient data recovery.



The presented capability enables the export of EXB file from normal modes solution sequence (SOL 103) and also permits the export of EXB file of preloaded components from nonlinear analysis solution sequence (SOL 400). Preloading the component in SOL 400 while generating EXB file supports complex nonlinear phenomena like contact and material nonlinearity. MBD simulation results can then be read into MSC Nastran for efficient data recovery of various physical quantities in frequency response solution sequence (SOL 111), transient response solution sequence (SOL 112) and also SOL 400 for further dynamic, vibration, acoustic or durability analysis.



The export of EXB file involves the calculation of computationally intensive higher order mass invariants which are required for a more accurate representation of flexible component. Shared memory parallelization is employed in calculating these quantities to speed-up the process of exporting EXB file. It is often the case that the recovery of physical quantities like displacements, velocities, stress and strain in MSC Nastran are only required on a subset of components topology. To speed-up the data recovery process external superelement (EXTSE) based data recovery is employed; this permits the efficient data recovery of subset of physical quantities (e.g. surface velocities) that are of interest to the user.