Mechanical System and SimMechanics Simulation

The work shows the use of SimMechanics for modeling of mechanical systems. As an example a mechanical model of one degree of freedom is solved by this toolbox for the Matlab/ Simulink environment. This paper describes how to simulate the dynamics of mechanical system with SimMechanics. Mechanical systems are represented by connected block diagrams. Unlike normal Simulink blocks, which represent mathematical operations, or operate on signals, physical modeling blocks represent physical components in SimMechanics, and geometric and kinematic relationships directly. This is not only more intuitive, it also saves the time and effort to derive the equations of motion. SimMechanics models, however, can be interfaced seamlessly with ordinary Simulink block diagrams. This enables the user to design e.g. the mechanical and the control system in one common environment.