Simscape multibody composite rigid body inertia

Howdy,

I'm working with simscape multibody and I've seen using inertia sensor there's chance to select a local group of connected blocks or whole mechanicsms. I was wondering if for a complex branched mechanism would be possible to take also a composite rigid body inertia measure (using actual configurations given by joints positions) for single branches in palce of whole mechanism of any workaround exist for.

Cheers,

Soldà Enrico

[Anurag Ojha]

Hey

As the default behavior of the Inertia Sensor block is to measure the inertia of either the entire mechanism or a local group of connected blocks. However, we can achieve the desired measurement by using a combination of techniques and a bit of creativity.

Here is how I would approach the problem:

• Break down your complex mechanism into smaller subsystems or branches.
• Refer to following documentation of how to do so:
• https://www.mathworks.com/help/simulink/ug/creating-subsystems.html
• Each subsystem can be represented as a separate model or a masked subsystem within the larger model.
• Place an Inertia Sensor block at strategic locations within each branch or subsystem
• Configure each sensor to measure the inertia of the specific group of connected blocks that make up the branch.
• If built in Inertia Sensor does not directly support we can consider to write MATLAB scripts to calculate composite inertia manually.

Let me know if this works!