Ex-3: Modal Simulation of a drone

🧰The Rhino and Grasshopper files used in this example can be downloaded here: example3_drone.zip
*Legacy* files for Rhino 7 can also be found here: example3_drone_rhino7.zip

This example demonstrates how to simulate the natural frequencies of a drone. This is a free vibration analysis, so there are no restraints.

• The key steps involved in setting up the simulation are explained here.
• New users are advised to checkout the getting started page to understand the basics of using the plugin.

• Place a geometry object on the canvas by double-clicking anywhere and typing geometry. Hit enter to place the object on the canvas
• Right-click on the geometry object and change the name of the object to “drone body”. Click “Set one geometry” and click the body of the drone in Rhino
• Create an Intact Component and connect the drone block’s output to the component as shown in (b)
• Create a Standard Material block. Right-click on the block and choose “ABS” as the material (c)

• Create a solver settings block as shown in (a)
  • Set the target resolution (Res) to 50K by creating a number slider, right-clicking, and changing the max value and value to 50000
  • Select the direct solver type (St)
  • Select the basis order (B) as 1 for linear elements (basis order = 2 for quadratic elements)
• Create a Modal Solver object as shown in (b)
  • Connect the solver settings (SS)
  • Connect the drone component (C)
  • Set the number of desired frequencies as 15 (F)
• Hit solve to compute the solution

Since this is a free free modal simulation, we do not have any restraints. If restraints were desired, they would be set up as follows

• Create a geometry and set that geometry to the surface you desire to be restrained (a)
• Create a fixed restraint object and connect the geometry to G (b)
• Connect the fixed restraint to the Modal Solver (c)

• Create a visualization block and connect the solver output to the visualization block (a)
• Optionally, users can connect the visualization settings block for customizing the views
• Right click on the visualize block and choose the simulation output for display. In this case, it is each mode
• Create a panel block and connect it to the frq output on the Modal solver to display the mode frequencies in list form (c)
• Optionally, the deflection scale (Def) can be altered to visualize the mode shapes

• In Rhino, select the body of the drone and click hide. This will prevent the object from interfering with the visualization of the simulation

Modal Simulation of the drone is displayed below. The displayed mode is near 68 Hz. To load the simulation results later, create a simulation reader block, right-click, select the simulation, and connect it to a visualize block.