Soil Model in simmechanics

Hi I'm looking to do a soil-tool interaction model using Simulink and simmechanics. Any starter ideas?

Answer 1

[Steve Miller]

Some ideas:

1. You can use the Variable Mass blocks to add/remove soil from buckets (example: General Variable Mass block)
2. You can use External Force and Torque block to apply the resistance force for a bucket digging through the ground.
3. The Spatial Contact Force block can be used to model contact between the wheels and the ground. You'll have to either set the contact parameters to be very soft and/or add some additional forces to capture the effect of a deformable surface (move the ground plane, more resistance on the wheels).

There are discrete element modeling tools, such as EDEM, that can be combined with Simscape Multibody to model soil-tool interaction with much more detail, but these models will take significantly longer to simulate.

--Steve