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Benefits

  • Provides an early system-level view of electrical and mechanical architectures, before detailed CAD or FEA models exist.
  • Enables trade-off analysis among performance, power, reliability, environment tolerance and cost.
  • Helps identify bottlenecks, over-stressed components and fragile interactions between electrical and mechanical subsystems.
  • Supports exploration of environmental and failure scenarios without costly physical tests.
  • Integrates electrical and mechanical elements with digital, communication and power models for a complete cyber-physical view of the system.

The Electrical & Mechanical Systems library in VisualSim Architect provides behavioral models for electro-mechanical and mechatronic systems where electrical, mechanical and control domains interact. These models focus on performance (latency and throughput), power consumption and functional behavior at the system level.

Architects can use this library to perform a first-level system trade-off, evaluate how electrical and mechanical subsystems interact with the rest of the architecture, understand the impact of environmental conditions such as temperature, dust, vibration and humidity, and explore system behavior under failure scenarios. The same abstraction can be used to represent a wide range of electrical or mechanical systems.

Overview

The library provides parameterizable building blocks that represent electro-mechanical systems as event-driven resources with performance, power and environmental dependence:

  • Electrical Subsystem Models – Behavioral representations of power stages, drives, converters, control electronics and sensors.
  • Mechanical Subsystem Models – Abstract models of actuators, motors, gear trains, linkages, pumps, valves and moving assemblies.
  • Control and Coordination Blocks – Interfaces to controllers, task graphs and scheduling logic that orchestrate electrical and mechanical actions.
  • Power and Energy Usage – Power consumed as a function of operations, events, duty cycles and environmental stress.
  • Environment and Operating Conditions – Models for the impact of temperature, dust, vibration, humidity and other external factors on performance and reliability.
  • Failure and Degradation Behavior – Hooks for fault injection, degradation over time and failure-mode behavior at system level.

These components provide a unified way to integrate electrical and mechanical systems with digital, communication and power models inside VisualSim.

Supported Features

  • Event-Driven Performance Modeling:
    • Latency and throughput for operations such as moves, actuations, start/stop and control loops.
    • Queue-based and scheduled access to shared mechanical or electrical resources.
  • Power and Energy Modeling:
    • Power consumed per operation, duty cycle and utilization level.
    • Energy per cycle, per motion, per transaction or per mission profile.
  • Environmental Conditions:
    • Abstract models of temperature, vibration, dust and humidity.
    • Impact of environmental conditions on timing, capacity, error rate and lifetime.
  • Failure and Fault Injection:
    • Configurable failure rates and modes (stuck, degraded performance, intermittent, complete failure).
    • Behavioral responses for safe shutdown, fallback or degraded operation.
  • Interaction with Other Domains:
    • Interfaces to electrical power systems, control software, communication links and sensors.
    • Support for cascading effects (e.g., power drop affecting motor torque and timing).
  • Ability to represent generic electrical or mechanical systems using configurable parameters and profiles.

Key Parameters

  • Operation_Time – Time required to complete a mechanical or electrical operation.
  • Throughput_Capacity – Maximum operations, motions or cycles per unit time.
  • Power_per_Operation – Energy or power usage for specific events and duty cycles.
  • Idle_Power / Standby_Power – Power consumed when not actively operating.
  • Environment_Profile – Temperature, vibration, dust, humidity or other external conditions.
  • Env_Impact_Factors – Sensitivity of timing, capacity or reliability to environment changes.
  • Failure_Rate / MTBF – Statistical failure parameters.
  • Failure_Modes – Types of failures (degraded performance, stuck, intermittent, complete).
  • Recovery_Strategy – Safe state, restart or degraded-mode behavior on failure.
  • Resource_Coupling – Dependencies on power, communication or other shared resources.
  • Duty_Cycle / Utilization_Target – Expected operational profile for sizing and trade-offs.

Applications

  • Industrial and Factory Automation
    • Production lines, conveyors, robotic cells and mechatronic assemblies.
    • Impact of cycle time, equipment utilization and failures on throughput.
  • Automotive and Transportation
    • Electrical subsystems (pumps, fans, actuators, window lifts, seat motors, braking helpers).
    • Mechanical subsystems interacting with ECUs, sensors and vehicle networks.
  • Aerospace and Defense
    • Actuation systems (flaps, landing gear, control surfaces) and associated power electronics.
    • Behavior under vibration, temperature extremes and mission-profile changes.
  • Energy and Utilities
    • Switchgear, breakers, valves, pumps and mechanical regulators.
    • Response to load, environment and failure conditions at the system level.
  • General Mechatronics and Robotics
    • Motors, gearboxes, drives and controllers interacting with digital control and sensing.
    • Evaluation of timing, power and reliability under different workloads and environments.

Integrations

The Electrical & Mechanical Systems library integrates with:

  • Processor and Control libraries for embedded controllers, ECUs and supervisory logic.
  • Power and Energy libraries for supply, battery, generator and load modeling.
  • Traffic Modeling for realistic workloads, commands and usage profiles.
  • Communication System and Network models representing control and feedback links.
  • Thermal and Environment models to apply temperature, vibration and environmental conditions.
  • Stochastic Resource and Failure models for reliability, availability and maintenance studies.

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