Structural analysis of a swinging fairground attraction using a novel implementation of reduced order modeling in multibody dynamics

This research presents a novel method to determine transient stresses in a fairground attraction by combining the strengths of Ansys' finite element models, model order reduction and Simscape Multibody. Currently, most fairground attractions are designed using quasi-static structural analyses. This study shows that this commonly used method can overestimate the stresses greatly in highly dynamic structures. Also, dynamic effects like vibrations within the structure are not considered, possibly resulting in underestimates of the stresses. This method is therefore sub-optimal to assess the safety of structures like fairground attractions. On the other hand, full transient structural analyses are computationally expensive to run. The method outlined in this paper obtains a similar accuracy compared to a full transient study, but by using only a fraction of the computational time. This also enables the model to be used in real time applications of determining the dynamic behavior of structures. Furthermore, as this model is built up within Simulink, the powerful tools within the electrical and control domain provided by Simulink are easy to apply on this structural model. A fairground attraction is used as a practical scenario to apply this method on. The paper concludes by extensively comparing the results of the new method with the quasi-static structural analysis, full transient structural analysis, noting the benefits and shortcomings for each method on different structures. Also, a comparison with real-live obtained data will be made.