Session: MSNDC-12-01: Computational Methods and Software Tools in Multibody Systems and Nonlinear Dynamics

Paper Number: 142643

142643 - Seamless Integration of Multibody and Orbital Dynamics to Support Human
Spaceflight Simulations 

At the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), modeling capability requirements are often driven by the need to simulate upcoming mission scenarios for analysis, procedures development, and training. In preparation for free-flyer vehicle capture, maneuvers, and release, it was determined that the multibody dynamics capabilities provided by MBDyn and the orbital dynamics capabilities supplied by JEOD needed to be merged to properly simulate the dynamic behaviors expected on orbit. After initial attempts to combine the two packages proved cumbersome, it was decided that a more refined solution was required to facilitate the interface between these two packages. The resulting interface software package was named MBJEOD. The primary design goals for this new package were to leave MBDyn and JEOD untouched, to simplify and clarify simulation initialization for users, and to support any topology or on-orbit operational scenario that future missions might require. This paper provides a detailed overview of MBJEOD and the approach taken to seamlessly integrate the multibody dynamics of MBDyn with the orbital dynamics of JEOD. Additional attention is given to the numerical considerations required for MBJEOD and the simplifying assumptions leveraged to provide for real-time simulation needs. Verification and validation are addressed and current MBJEOD applications at the NASA JSC are discussed.

Presenting Author: Christopher Sullivan METECS

Presenting Author Biography: Christopher Sullivan is a simulation and software engineer at METECS in Houston, Texas where he works on dynamics modeling software in the Software, Robotics, and Simulation Division at the NASA Johnson Space Center.
He studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Iowa where he graduated with his bachelor's in 2019 and his master's in 2020. He studied under Professor Hiroyuki Sugiyama with a focus on model order reduction for multibody dynamics applications.

His previous work, alongside Prof. Sugiyama and Dr. Hiroki Yamashita, titled "Reduced Order Modeling of Deformable Tire-Soil Interaction with Proper Orthogonal Decomposition" was published in the Journal of Computational and Nonlinear Dynamics as a selected paper from the 2021 IDETC-CIE MSND Conference.

Authors:

Christopher Sullivan METECS
Thomas Brain METECS
Leslie Quiocho NASA Johnson Space Center