-
MBDyn is the first and possibly the only
free*
general-purpose
MultiBody
Dynamics
analysis software, released under
GNU's
GPL 2.1
(get a cached copy here).
It has been developed at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale of the University "Politecnico di Milano", Italy.
MBDyn features the integrated multidisciplinary analysis of multibody,
multiphysics systems, including nonlinear mechanics of rigid and flexible
constrained bodies, smart materials,
electric networks, active control, hydraulic networks,
essential fixed-wing and rotorcraft aerodynamics.
What is a multibody system? Find out here (but come back!)
It allows to simulate the behavior of heterogeneous mechanical,
aeroservoelastic systems based on first principles equations.
It is being actively developed and used in the aerospace,
automotive, and mechatronic fields for the analysis and simulation
of the dynamics of complex systems.
The extension of available analysis domains to new models,
and new analysis domains is planned, and problem-driven: if you need
to solve a specific problem, let us know.
Dynamic linking of user-defined modules
is heavily exploited to let users extend the feature library.
On GNU/Linux, real-time execution is supported under
RTAI,
the Real-Time Application Interface, and POSIX tight scheduling.
|
Feedback
Are you using MBDyn for a research or an industrial project? Would you like to share your experience with other users? Send us a link to a webpage describing your work, and a brief description to appear in the research page. |
- What MBDyn is:
- a command-line, direct initial-value problem solver with a large, flexible multifield element library
- a research tool
- a community developed, research driven free software
- What MBDyn is not:
- a complete out-of-the-box 'bells and whistles' GUI for solid modeling
- a commercial tool
- a 24/7 supported software
Semispan Wing WRATS Tiltrotor Model
(rendered by ADAMS/View)
- 2010-08-14: MBDyn 1.3.16 is out; directly promoted to stable.
- 2010-04-26: MBDyn 1.3.15 is out; extensive improvements to external force handling (builtin & peer-side), KLU support, improved diagnostics, reworked user-defined element handling.
- 2010-04-08: Jinwei Shen gave an introductory presentation about MBDyn to an Army Research Laboratory (ARL) team at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Joppa, MD.
- 2010-03-16: MBDyn 1.3.14 is out; minor improvements.
- 2010-03-11: Doug Baldwin announced the release of Blender & MBDyn 0.4.0, promoted from Alpha to Beta. Read more.
- 2010-03-05: MBDyn 1.3.13 is out; misc improvements.
- 2010-02-14:
Aviation News
acknowledges the contribution of MBDyn
to the analysis of the Puffin personal air vehicle concept
[pdf]
(thanks to Jinwei Shen: read the paper Multibody Dynamics Model of a VTOL Teetering Rotor, AHS Aeromechanics Specialists' Conference, January 20-22, 2010, San Francisco, CA). - 2010-02-13: MBDyn 1.3.12 is out; minor bug fixes, plus wind profiles. It is directly promoted to stable.
- 2010-01-12: MBDyn 1.3.11 is out; it is directly promoted to stable.
- 2010-01-01: Happy new year.
- 2009-11-19: MBDyn 1.3.10 is out. MBDyn 1.3.9 promoted to stable.
- 2009-07-15: MBDyn 1.3.9 is out (MBDyn 1.3.8 intentionally not announced).
- 2009-06-08: the mailing lists moved to a new ISP; the whole thing is shaking down, so if you experience problems, please be patient. In case, feel free to notify issues either through the mbdyn-users@mbdyn.org mailing list itself, or to mbdyn@aero.polimi.it if the former does not work.
- 2009-05-25: this video shows some examples of modeling and analysis using Blender & MBDyn (thanks to Doug Baldwin).
- 2009-03-17: MBDyn 1.3.7 is out. Mainly bugfixes.
- 2009-01-20: MBDyn 1.3.6 is out. Mainly bugfixes in order to allow building on Mac (thanks to people at University of Maryland's Aerospace Engineering Department) and on Windows with MinGW/MSYS. This release has been promoted to stable.
- 2009-01-08:
MBDyn 1.3.5
is out.
This is the first release version of the MBDyn 1.3 series.
It presents significant enhancements, including:
- direct eigenanalysis (using elements that contribute to the Jacobian matrix), based on LAPACK/ARPACK;
- dynamics in a relative frame (useful for rotating system eigenanalysis);
- complete rework of real-time scheduling & I/O, including POSIX-based scheduling as a soft alternative to RTAI, and streamed motion output;
- support for generic, tightly coupled external forces (specialized to the interaction with FOI's EDGE);
- selected bug fixes.
- 2009-01-03: direct eigenanalysis, using lapack and arpack, has been added to MBDyn. This feature will appear in the next release.
- 2009-01-01: Happy new year.
- 2008-12-29: Relative reference frame dynamics added to MBDyn. Currently, a whole model can be written in relative coordinates, subjected to an arbitrary reference motion. Future development could allow to intermix absolute and relative reference frame submodels.
- 2008-12-21: Riccardo Gori (goriccardo AT gmail DOT com) is implementing a train wheel module. More info soon.
- 2008-10-30:
Doug Baldwin
announced
Blender & MBDyn,
a GUI for MBDyn based on
Blender.
The source code
is hosted by SourceForge.
Note: "Blender & MBDyn" and "BlendedMBDyn" are unrelated. We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of all Blender experts in making MBDyn more and more usable. - 2008-10-02: BlendedMBDyn, the experimental pre/post processor for MBDyn based on Blender, moved to a new site (the link http://www.enlightenengineering.com/BlendedMBDyn/ no longer works; old site).
- 2008-08-25: MBDyn 1.3.4-Beta is out. This release of MBDyn 1.3 addresses a number of minor issues, and provides selected enhancements, including support for modal element data generated using Code Aster.
- 2008-08-05:
a macro is available to extract Component Mode Synthesis (CMS)
data (the "modal" element FEM file data)
from Code Aster,
the free FEM solver developed by EDF.
More details here.
Feedback is welcome. Please either post on the
Code Aster forum
(for issues related, e.g., to Code Aster installation and use),
or on the MBDyn users
mailing list (for issues related to MBDyn use and to FEM data formatting).
Remember that subscription is required for both.
Many thanks to Code Aster developers for their support.
Note: the use of data generated with Aster might not be compatible with MBDyn 1.3.3 and earlier, unless manually edited. - 2008-07-30: Pierangelo Masarati gave a lecture about multibody dynamics and MBDyn at LaMSID (EDF R&D - French CNRS Joint Laboratory).
- 2008-07-22: MBDyn will be used for the research project "Modeling of biomechanical man-machine interaction in vehicles", PRIN 2007. An aeroelastic model of a helicopter, with provisions for man-machine biomechanical interaction, will be produced and distributed.
- 2008-05-05: Pierangelo Masarati gave an invited lecture about real-time multibody dynamics and MBDyn at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Universidad Pública de Navarra.
- 2008-03-01:
vimsyntax highlights for MBDyn's input are available invar/mbd.vim(starting from the next release; give it a try now). - 2008-02-09: Fanzhong Meng, during a stage at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale of Politecnico di Milano, is working on a module implementing NREL's AeroDyn wind-turbine aerodynamic loads for MBDyn.
- 2008-01-26: MBDyn 1.3.3-Beta is out. This release of MBDyn 1.3 fixes a bug in aerodynamic coefficient table lookup and adds some new features.
- 2008-01-03: MBDyn 1.3.2-Beta is out. This release of MBDyn 1.3 is mainly intended to fix recent issues appeared with the previous release, along with extended support for NetCDF output. The input manual has been extended quite a bit.
- 2008-01-03: Happy new year
- 2007-12-20: The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has a page about MBDyn.
- 2007-12-06: Valerio Boschi presented a lecture at JPL on a work involving MDByn.
- 2007-11-28: a paper on multibody software accessibility is available here.
- 2007-11-17: Marco Morandini developed an automatic differentiation patch using CppAD, within ANTASME, a MATEO Project.
- 2007-08-31: MBDyn 1.3.1-Alpha is finally out. This is the first public release of MBDyn 1.3, which is mainly intended to shake down remaining issues. There's still lots to do to have it in shape; among other things, output with NetCDF is far from complete.
- 2007-06-19: RT-MBDyn is used to simulate a wind turbine in real-time, to support the development of innovative solutions for Embedded Real Time Applications within the SI PARTE! project. Details here.
- 2007-05-21: MBDyn 1.2.7 is out. This is the final 1.2 release; 1.3 will be out shortly.
- 2007-05-11: Apparently, the Flight Design and Dynamics Department of the NASA Johnson Space Center at Houston is procuring and distributing MBDyn within the organization, as indicated here [cache]
- 2007-04-16: MBDyn sim suite is available here.
- 2007-03-13: John Kollman is developing a graphical user interface for MBDyn based on Blender.
- 2007-02-26: Apparently, MBDyn will be part of the
Huri Batash
(high wind in Nepali) project for a free wind-turbine analysis software
(check the project's news).
Nice logo:
- 2007-01-05: a first cut to MBDyn output on a NetCDF database has been committed to CVS (thanks to Patrick Rix). Interested developers should contact via mbdyn-users@mbdyn.org (subscription required; instructions here).
- 2007-01-01: Happy new year
- 2006-12-16: MBDyn is being evaluated as a possible tool to model the Horizontal Access Module Seismic Attenuation System (HAM-SAS) of the advanced version of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO), under development at CalTech.
- 2006-12-15: Patrick Rix is working on a project, called MBDyn-Eclipse-project, to support MBDyn development in Eclipse, an open development platform.
- 2006-11-20: MBDyn is now listed in the academics software page of the IFToMM Technical Committee for Multibody Dynamics.
- 2006-11-10: Patrick Rix posted to sourceforge a project, called MBDyn_bulk_utils, for a simple data extraction and plotting suite, to ease plotting MBDyn output with gnuplot. The announcement is available here.
- 2006-10-24: MBDyn output can be converted to use EasyAnim as GUI for post-processing. EasyAnim, initially developed by Olivier Verlinden at Faculté Polytechnique de Mons, is now being actively developed and maintained by MBDyn developers. See this page for further information.
- 2006-10-20: Portions of MBDyn website moved to a new location; if you experience broken links, please mail to mbdyn@aero.polimi.it a brief description of the problem.
- 2006-08-05: this patch fixes an issue with the Jacobian matrix of rod joints when offsets are present.
- 2006-02-08: this patch is required to compile 1.2.6 with --enable-schur.
- 2006-02-01: MBDyn 1.2.6 is out: few bug fixes, better docs (manual & tutorials), reworked modal element.
- 2006-01-01: Happy new year
- 2005-12-28: this document erroneously states that MBDyn "...was jointly developed by NASA Langley, Agusta and the Milano Polytech Institute". This sentence appears in a section describing activities run by CIRA, the Italian Aerospace Agency; the "Milano Polytech(nic) Institute" is supposed to be "Politecnico di Milano". The developers of MBDyn never received any direct or indirect support (read: money and development effort) from the cited institutions. Otherwise MBDyn wouldn't likely be free software. The Army Research Laboratory (ARL) at NASA Langley supported the development of MBDyn by means of a CRDA (read: no money, but lots of info and data) since 1998.
- 2005-11-29: MBDyn 1.2.5 is out: few bug fixes, slightly better docs, some interesting new features. See the changelog.
- 2005-05-23: it has been reported that the ARL project about a converter from DADS to MBDyn has been closed. It is very unlikely that any code developed so far will ever be released.
- 2005-05-22: a FreeBSD port of MBDyn 1.2.4 is available, thanks to Kay Lehmann (kay_lehmann AT web DOT de).
- 2005-03-02: MBDyn 1.2.4 is out; fixes the Cygwin build.
- 2005-02-26: a port of MBDyn for FreeBSD is being developed at Technische Universität Berlin.
- 2005-02-26: MBDyn 1.2.3 works just fine with Umfpack v4.4 (used by permission).
- 2005-02-10: MBDyn 1.2.3 is out; a bugfix/feature request release, with reworked socket handling (for Simulink interface), deformable joints fix and cleanup. Featuring the matrix-free nonlinear solvers family for special applications (thanks to Giuseppe Quaranta).
- 2005-01-01: Happy new year!
- 2004-12-03: The U.S. Army Research Laboratory Major Shared Resource Center (ARL-MSRC) is using MBDyn for distributed vehicle dynamics analysis; read the story (sometimes unreachable; grab a cached copy from Google).
- 2004-11-24: MBDyn 1.2.2 is out; mainly a bugfix release. See the changelog for details.
- 2004-08-19: Chaco domain partitioning eXperimental support is introduced for 1.2.1.
- 2004-08-16: MBDyn 1.2.1 is out, which, among minor improvements, restores the parallel Schur solver and introduces the Simulink interface for the integrated analysis of multidisciplinary systems. Moreover, a new installation manual is under development.
- 2004-07-21: MBDyn 1.2.0 is out,
with some significant improvements since 1.2 Beta 4
(see the changelog for details).
The manual is still lagging a bit behind, but improvements occurred on that side as well. - 2004-07-08: A presentation on RT-MBDyn was given at the
One-day meeting on: RTAI, present and future
.
- 2004-05-27: MBDyn 1.2 Beta 4 is out; few significant improvements from HEAD; this will likely freeze into 1.2.0.
- 2004-05-24: MBDyn HEAD and 1.2-Beta successfully compiles with gcc 3.4.0.
- 2004-05-18: Successfully compiled with Umfpack 4.3
and ATLAS 3.7.3; minimal performance improvements
in some cases (small problems), might need further
investigation.
Note to RT-MBDyn users: compile Umfpack 4.3 with -DNO_TIMER to disable timing system calls. - 2004-05-08: MBDyn mailing lists are activated; see below for details.
- 2004-04-19: MBDyn 1.2 Beta 2 is out; mainly a bugfix pre-release.
- 2004-03-11: Major update of the RT-MBDyn home page with movies of the COMAU SMART robot in simulated real-time action.
- 2004-03-01: MBDyn 1.2 Beta 1 is released.
- 2004-02-27: A Beta of MBDyn 1.2 is about to be released; it contains the new internal structure and solution layout, many new features, RTAI support and multithread assembly.
- 2004-01-13: Added support for SuperLU sparse parallel solution package, to perform multithreaded factorization via POSIX threads.
- 2004-01-02: MBDyn now supports multithread Jacobian and residual assembly via POSIX threads.
- 2004-01-01: Happy new year!
- 2003-12-23: the RT-MBDyn home page has been published. The RTAI extensions for MBDyn will be distributed in the next release.
- 2003-12-05: the patch for Umfpack 4.1 to disable syscalls when running in real-time has been updated.
- 2003-11-25: MBDyn has been successfully coupled to a free wake analysis software by means of a general purpose communication and field interpolation engine; extensions to CFD analysis are being tested. For details, contact the developers.
- 2003-11-09: A paper on the user-space hard real-time simulation under GNU/Linux RTAI has been presented to the Fifth Real-Time Linux Workshop, November 9-11, 2003, Valencia, Spain.
- 2003-08-13: A snapshot of current HEAD code for Windows 2000/XP is available; needs cygwin libraries. NOTICE: no support for Windows snapshots is available.
- 2003-07-01: A paper and a poster (available soon) on multibody open source software were presented at the Multibody Dynamics 2003 July 1-4 2003, Lisboa, Portugal.
- 2003-06-26: The site has been down for a while because of (programmed?) black-outs on national scale.
- 2003-05-29: Support for RTAI, GNU/Linux's Real Time Application Interface, has been added to MBDyn, with hooks for hard user space real time scheduling, input and output, to allow local/networked hardware/software-in-the-loop simulations. This enhancement will appear in the next major release; those interested may contact the developers.
- 2003-05-29: Support for Umfpack 4.1 has been added. This enhancement will appear in the next major release.
- 2003-03-08: Note to developers: the design of the code (node/element API, time step simulation drivers and more) is undergoing major changes. Those interested in the internals should contact the developers to get detailed information/code snapshots of the new design.
- 2002-12-15: MBDyn will support the AeroDyn 12.3
subroutines from
Winward Engineering
for the simulation of wind turbine systems
(Note: they're currently coded in f90, so on GNU/Linux they require a f90/C++ compiler; we're using Intel icc/ifc v 7.0; we had problems linking ifc objects with gcc 3.X). - 2002-11-27: a patch to avoid symbol clashing if f2c.h is available has been prepared, based on a user report.
- 2002-11-27: if you can read this, it means you already know we're back on the 'net, with a surprise: 1.1.4 :).
- 2002-11-26: MBDyn 1.1.4 is released, since 1.2 is getting late ... (bug fix release: better configurability and portability, various bugfixes, support for Umfpack 4.0 sparse solver).
- 2002-11-26: due to a flood in our central network, we're offline for a while; please be patient.
- 2002-11-01: an OpenDX based postprocessor/visualization project is started; contact us if you want to know more ...
- 2002-07-26: download page is updated; patches to MPI 1.2.0 (not the latest, though) and Metis are provided
- 2002-07-26: MBDyn 1.1.3 is released (bug fix release; this is the last release of 1.1, unless major bugs are fixed before 1.2 is out).
- 2002-06-30: everything should be fine now; mbdyn.aero.polimi.it is back.
- 2002-06-29: network problems: no download available from mbdyn.aero.polimi.it; only the latest release is available (see the download page).
- 2002-05-21: we've been subjected to frequent black-outs, recently; we apologize for any inconvenience.
- 2002-04-27: a file was missing from 1.1.2; please get 1.1.2-2.
- 2002-04-24: MBDyn 1.1.2 is released (parallel build improvement, bug fixes).
- Download a movie of the WRATS tiltrotor entering whirl flutter (1.7 Mb).
- 2002-03-21: MBDyn 1.1.1 is released (bug fix release; fixes parallel build).
- 2002-01-16: MBDyn 1.1.0 is released (fixes a flaw in solver workspace handling, resulting in far better performances).
- 2001-11-14: MBDyn 1.0.1 is released (bug fix release).
- 2001-11-05: MBDyn 1.0.0 is released (first release).
- The MBDyn Project.
- The MBDyn Team.
- Contributing.
- Read the licensing issues ...
- ... and the disclaimer.
- Download the latest release of the source code.
- Browse the change log.
- Have a look at the related packages...
- ... and the supported platforms.
- MBDyn output can be formatted for use with EasyAnim.
- Following the above lines, MBDyn output can be formatted for use with other visualization tools. If you would like your favorite visualization tool to be supported by MBDyn, and it complies with very simple technical and licensing requirements, please drop us a note.
- Subscribe to announce;
browse the archives.
This list is intended as a place to post announcements related to MBDyn, e.g. new releases, events and other related issues. Very low traffic is expected.
Only subscribers, subjected to moderator's approval, can post to this list. - Subscribe to users;
browse the archives.
This list is intended as a forum to discuss the use of MBDyn. Since no dedicated bug tracking mechanism has been put in place yet, please post here about problems or what you suppose is a bug.
Only subscribers can post to this list.
- send public inquiries to mbdyn-users@mbdyn.org (only subscribers can post to this list; see mailing lists for details). Public discussion is open and free, since it may be beneficial to all users; it implies that all exchanged data and information is public;
- send private inquiries to mbdyn@aero.polimi.it. Note that private discussion could end up to the point where it configures as consulting. In the latter case, an economical agreement might be required to continue support, since the software is free and open, but its developers' time is not (see our consulting services for details).
- Here is the documentation center.
- Input manual: see the documentation of the software version you're using.
- Installation manual: see the documentation of the software version you're using.
-
Tutorials.
- Applications.
- Examples.
- FAQ.
- Browse some publications on the subject.
- Here is some research involving MBDyn.
- Here are some links about MBDyn.
-
CVS tree (authorized users only).
The CVS at present is not freely browsable essentially because the development is currently done only here at Politecnico di Milano, and we don't have the resources (mostly time) to maintain a public CVS; however, if you have any special needs, or you believe you need access to the repository, drop us a note. - Patches should be submitted using
the mailing lists (only subscribers can post to the lists):
- for bug fixes to mbdyn-users@mbdyn.org
- for new features to mbdyn-users@mbdyn.org
- It is recognized that MBDyn's documentation
is lagging behind source code releases.
As such, this link hosts the input manual and other docs
that may refer to yet unreleased code, but that are likely
to be more accurate and useful of those accompanying
any of the official releases, and get updated more often;
the intention is to refresh them quite often.
-
Input manual
(last updated October 8, 2009)
-
Technical manual.
(last updated August 30, 2007)
-
Input manual
- Known bugs & unresolved issues.
- Future enhancements.
- Found a bug? Got a problem? Ideas for an improvement? Let us know (only subscribers can post to this list; see mailing lists for details).
- Check our consulting services.
- Links to Aerospace Engineering, Rotorcraft Dynamics and Multibody Analysis.
-
Related projects:
- Blender & MBDyn, a pre/post processor based on Blender. See also Vimeo for some videos featuring Blender & MBDyn.
- Blended MBDyn was a previous effort, also based on Blender.
- MBDyn sim suite, a collection of pre and post-processing tools and models forming a general purpose simulation environment for structural dynamics with an emphasis on wind turbines.
- RTAI, the Real-Time Application Interface to GNU/Linux, a key component of RT-MBDyn.
-
Some pics and movies are available here.