Performance Comparison of the Simscape Multibody Solvers for Articulated Mechanical Systems

SIMSCAPE MULTIBODY is considered an efficient simulation tool for the dynamic analysis of articulated mechanical systems due to the ease of modeling complex mechanical systems, the CAD import feature, and allowing for the implementation of advanced control techniques. Therefore, the objective of this study is to evaluate the performances of seven solvers implemented in SIMSCAPE MULTIBODY in terms of the error and the total elapsed simulation time. As the benchmark problem, a physical pendulum under three different load scenarios is considered, namely dynamic torque, no torque, and static torque. Computed angular position and angular velocity values at the final time step are compared with those obtained from the SIMULINK model. In addition to comparing the total elapsed simulation times in the SIMSCAPE MULTIBODY environment, the total elapsed simulation times are also compared with those obtained from SIMULINK simulations. The numerical results found in this study show a good agreement between the effectiveness of the solvers analyzed and appreciable differences in their efficiency.