Towards more insight with functional digital mockup

Digital Mock-Up (DMU) is a widely introduced technology to virtually investigate geometrical and mechanical product properties. Functional Digital Mock-Up (FDMU) is a combination of traditional DMU with behavioural simulation in mechatronics. Enhanced with functional aspects considerably more insight in product properties can be achieved. To enable FDMU two main tasks have to be solved: Established simulation approaches of the areas of mechanics, electronics, and software simulation must interact. This implies to solve the task of simulator coupling. Furthermore, the simulation results must be visualized using the geometric models of DMU. In the paper the development of a prototypic FDMU framework is presented. Given geometric models (e.g. VRML files) as weil as physical models are combined to soca lied functional building blocks (FBB). The interface of FBB is prepared to be connected to other FBB. According to the complete product to be simulated FBB are combined within the framework to built the FDMU simulation model (FSM). During simulation a simulator coupling algorithm controls the simulation processes of each FBB. Depending on FBB's physical domain appropriate simulators can be used for simulation. The FDMU framework provides wrappers for multi-physics, electronic, software, multi-body, and FEM simulation tools (Dymola, Saber, Rhapsody, SimPACK, ANSYS). The visualization enables user interactions, e.g. pushing buttons. If it is prepared parameters can be changed before each simulation run. The paper introduces the components of FDMU framework and illustrates the approach with an application example.