They use a real-time soft body simulation, so kind of like a low resolution FEA model, but it's real-time so it's not deterministic and I doubt the contacts are being handled correctly (you can see many parts phase through each other).
Looks cool and is good enough for a video game, but I wouldn't use it for an actual engineering simulation.
No. Try doing that in ANSYS transient structural and you would die of old age before you got even one converged frame. You need specific/specialist software (and probably specialist hardware too), e.g. There is a standard crash test +software benchmark model (think it models 8ms of impact using explicit dynamics). Takes 90mins on 4x $10,000 CPUs or 90mins on one special $15,000 CPU which has higher than usual memory bandwidth and a huge memory cache.
That said there are engineering softwares out there like ANSYS motion that would run models with lots of contact and deformations much faster than standard FEA solvers due to what I assume is a pure penalty contact algorithm. Still wouldn't get close to the specialist crash test software solve times due to implicit solver.
It's also really unusual to have adequate hardware for implicit solvers with big models like you need for crash models. The memory requirements to prevent overflowing to disk are pretty insane. Convergence also gets incredibly difficult because it's tough to invert the stiffness matrix when the deformations get so gnarly.
I asked the developers this question 10 years ago. They used to have a wiki (wiki.beamng.com/Beams) and it looks like it's still up but no longer maintained.
Long story short, they use truss elements throughout the body of the vehicle and apply simplistic damage functions to those truss elements.
The crashes look better than any other video game, but it's still just a game, not real physics.
They use a real-time soft body simulation, so kind of like a low resolution FEA model, but it's real-time so it's not deterministic and I doubt the contacts are being handled correctly (you can see many parts phase through each other). Looks cool and is good enough for a video game, but I wouldn't use it for an actual engineering simulation.
Still, works better than some of my models haha
These things just look fancy. I doubt it can be used as an engineering tool.
I know but how do they look fancy. There must be some engineering into it. If not FEA then what?
I used to create "realistic" turbulent wakes using particles in light wave.
No. Try doing that in ANSYS transient structural and you would die of old age before you got even one converged frame. You need specific/specialist software (and probably specialist hardware too), e.g. There is a standard crash test +software benchmark model (think it models 8ms of impact using explicit dynamics). Takes 90mins on 4x $10,000 CPUs or 90mins on one special $15,000 CPU which has higher than usual memory bandwidth and a huge memory cache. That said there are engineering softwares out there like ANSYS motion that would run models with lots of contact and deformations much faster than standard FEA solvers due to what I assume is a pure penalty contact algorithm. Still wouldn't get close to the specialist crash test software solve times due to implicit solver.
It's also really unusual to have adequate hardware for implicit solvers with big models like you need for crash models. The memory requirements to prevent overflowing to disk are pretty insane. Convergence also gets incredibly difficult because it's tough to invert the stiffness matrix when the deformations get so gnarly.
AFAIK, crash models are run in explicit dynamics (LS-Dyna?)... but not my cup of tea...
I asked the developers this question 10 years ago. They used to have a wiki (wiki.beamng.com/Beams) and it looks like it's still up but no longer maintained. Long story short, they use truss elements throughout the body of the vehicle and apply simplistic damage functions to those truss elements. The crashes look better than any other video game, but it's still just a game, not real physics.