The application of co-simulation technology of ANSYS and MSC.ADAMS in structural engineering

The combination of ANSYS and ADAMS can improve the precision of system simulation. In this paper, first, a cable-stayed space truss, consisting of stay cables, columns, and the space truss, is built in ANSYS. Second, the modal neutral file (mnf) needed in ADAMS is generated by executing the macro command “ADAMS” and then imported into ADAMS software. Third, the flexible body in the mnf file is connected to the rigid body built in ADAMS through the external nodes specified in ANSYS, and then the dynamic analysis can be carried out. Subsequently, the load file needed by ANSYS could be obtained by clicking on the menu “File Export”. Finally, the load file is imported into ANSYS software by the APDL language and the static analyses corresponding to different load steps are carried out. The simulation analysis shows a good performance and some results we are interested in are obtained.