Chrono: An Open Source Multi-physics Dynamics Engine

We provide an overview of a multi-physics dynamics engine called Chrono. Its forte is the handling of complex and large dynamic systems containing millions of rigid bodies that interact through frictional contact. Chrono has been recently augmented to support the modeling of fluid-solid interaction (FSI) problems and linear and nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA). We discuss Chrono’s software layout/design and outline some of the modeling and numerical solution techniques at the cornerstone of this dynamics engine. We briefly report on some validation studies that gauge the predictive attribute of the software solution. Chrono is released as open source under a permissive BSD3 license and available for download on GitHub.

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