An integrated multibody dynamics for land and marine transportation systems

Design of multipurpose, high mobility transportation system requires an effective integration of land, marine and space vehicles simulation. This integration poses many technical and operational requirement challenges during conceptual design, analysis, and simulation. This challenge increases in complexity when accommodating design iterations with multiple load cases or operational scenarios. The development of simulation capability that produces a synchronized and quick turnaround analyses for multiple design concepts, operational changes, and multiple load case becomes a business competitiveness issue. Such a simulation capability is necessary for mitigating the risk of design induced functional failures and facilitating design optimization. This study describes a multibody dynamics simulation methodology developed to analyze the dynamic loads associated with transporting land vehicles between marine vessels. This simulation capability calculates the time varying loads, on ground vehicle as well as on marine vessels, as the ground vehicle or cargo moves onto a ramp from a large carrier to a smaller transport vessel at various sea levels. Complexity in vessels modeling arises from several sources that are dynamic in nature. This modeling accounts for payload, engine thrust, sea level, balancing of small transport craft, and a moving ramp supported between a large ship to a transport craft, and finally a vehicle driven between the ships.