Cadence Adams — Multibody Dynamics Simulation

Overview

What Cadence Adams actually is

Cadence describes Adams as a way to validate designs without physical prototypes: engineers evaluate the interactions between motion, structures, actuation, and controls early, and can add pneumatics, hydraulics, electronics, and control-system technologies through optional modules. Adams is not a structural solver and not a CAD tool — it's a multibody dynamics (MBD) solver that predicts the motion, velocity, acceleration, and interconnection forces of a system built from multiple rigid or flexible bodies connected by joints, springs, dampers, actuators, and contacts. Where a structural FEA solver like Nastran answers "how does this one part deform under a known load," Adams answers a different question first: "what are the loads, at every instant, as this assembly of moving parts actually operates?"

An Adams model is built from bodies, connections (revolute, translational, spherical, and other joint types), and force elements assembled into a mechanism or vehicle topology. The solver then integrates the system's equations of motion through time — or, for simpler questions, solves kinematics alone. The Adams Modeler interface, built on the Apex platform, brings CAD-associative model building to this process: geometry features can be picked directly to place joints and forces, and flexible bodies can be generated from rigid CAD parts with a largely automated meshing step.

Adams sits upstream of, and often feeds, structural and durability analysis. Because it produces the actual time-varying loads a mechanism or vehicle experiences in operation — not an assumed static load case — those loads are frequently exported directly into Nastran or Marc as boundary conditions for stress, fatigue, and durability studies, closing the loop between "how does it move" and "will it survive."

A multibody model of an ATV chassis and suspension assembly mounted on a four-post durability shaker rig — A full-vehicle multibody model prepared for durability and road-load simulation on a four-post shaker rig — a textbook Adams application.

Product Flyer

Explore →

Key Capabilities

Nine core capabilities, explained

Each capability below is a distinct function inside Adams. For each one: what it solves, why engineers reach for it, the industries that depend on it most, the results it produces, and the design decisions those results are actually used to make.

01

Rigid-Body Kinematics & Dynamics

Rigid-body analysis treats every part in a mechanism as non-deformable and solves for its position, velocity, acceleration, and the forces transmitted through each joint as the system moves. Kinematic analysis is used when the motion is fully prescribed by the mechanism's geometry and constraints — a four-bar linkage driven at a fixed input speed, for example. Dynamic analysis goes further, solving Newton-Euler equations of motion so that motion emerges from applied forces, masses, and inertias rather than being prescribed directly. This is almost always the first model built for a new mechanism, because it establishes the baseline motion envelope and joint loads that later, more detailed studies are compared against.

Typical Industries: General mechanism design, industrial machinery, robotics, consumer product mechanisms.
Expected Outputs: Position, velocity, and acceleration time histories; joint reaction forces and torques; range-of-motion envelopes.
Design Decisions Enabled: Confirming a mechanism reaches its required travel and speed without interference, and sizing joints and actuators to the loads they'll actually see.

A flexible body finite-element mesh with a stress contour integrated into a multibody deployable mechanism — A flexible body — represented with its own FE mesh and deformation contour — integrated directly into a multibody mechanism.

02

Flexible-Body Multibody Dynamics

Real components deflect under load, and that deflection can change how a mechanism behaves — a long linkage arm may bend enough in operation to alter contact timing, or a panel may flex and vibrate as it's actuated. Flexible-body dynamics represents selected parts as finite-element-based flexible bodies within the multibody model instead of rigid links, so the solver captures both the rigid-body motion of the system and the elastic deformation of individual components simultaneously. Adams Modeler generates these flex bodies directly from rigid CAD parts through an automated meshing step, keeping them associative to the source geometry.

Typical Industries: Automotive body and closure mechanisms, aerospace deployable structures, industrial equipment with large or thin moving members.
Expected Outputs: Combined rigid-motion and elastic-deformation results; modal participation in the flexible body's response; deformed shapes during operation.
Design Decisions Enabled: Determining whether a part needs added stiffness to keep a mechanism's motion and timing within spec, before committing to a rigid-only assumption.

Adams Modeler interface showing a model tree of bodies and connectors alongside a 3D mechanical assembly — A model tree of bodies, joints, and force elements — the structure that defines how a mechanism's parts actually connect and interact.

03

Joint, Force & Contact Modeling

The behavior of any mechanism is defined as much by its connections as by its parts — revolute, translational, cylindrical, and spherical joints; springs, dampers, and bushings with linear or nonlinear force-deflection characteristics; and contact elements that transfer load only where and when two surfaces actually touch. Adams Modeler's CAD-associative workflow lets engineers pick geometric features directly to place these connections. Getting these definitions right is what separates a model that predicts real system behavior from one that only looks plausible. Contact and impact between rigid bodies, and between flexible and rigid bodies, are central to machines that repeatedly make and break contact; Adams 2026.1 added flexible-body contact softening to produce smoother, more realistic Impact-based 3D flex-rigid and flex-flex contact results.

Typical Industries: Automotive suspension and driveline, industrial machinery, robotics, off-highway equipment linkages.
Expected Outputs: Joint reaction forces and torques, contact pressure and force at defined interfaces, spring and damper force-deflection curves.
Design Decisions Enabled: Sizing bushings, dampers, and joint hardware to the actual transmitted loads, and confirming contact-dependent behavior across a full range of motion.

Adams Modeler screenshot mid-workflow, selecting entities to associate with a geometry part — Geometry-feature picking mid-workflow — associating a joint directly with the CAD part it belongs to, rather than a disconnected reference point.

04

CAD-Associative Model Building

Rather than treating geometry import as a one-time step, Adams Modeler maintains a generative relationship between CAD geometry and the multibody model built on top of it: model objects — joints, forces, flex bodies — stay associated with the geometric features that define them, so a geometry change regenerates the affected model objects instead of breaking the model outright. Engineers can edit geometry features directly without needing a round-trip back to the CAD group for every design iteration.

Typical Industries: Any CAD-driven mechanism design process — automotive, industrial machinery, consumer products, off-highway equipment.
Expected Outputs: A motion model that regenerates automatically from CAD updates, with joints, forces, and flex bodies remaining correctly positioned.
Design Decisions Enabled: Running design-iteration loops directly in the simulation environment, without waiting on a separate CAD update cycle for every geometry change.

05

Vehicle Dynamics & Full-Vehicle Modeling

Vehicle dynamics modeling assembles suspension, steering, powertrain, and tire subsystems into a full-vehicle multibody model to predict handling, ride, and stability characteristics — how the vehicle responds to steering input, road undulation, braking, and cornering loads. Suspension kinematics and compliance under load are solved together with vehicle-level maneuvers, using specialized tire models to represent the tire-road force interface realistically. Because these are multibody systems by nature, a full-vehicle dynamic model captures interaction effects between subsystems that isolated component checks cannot.

Typical Industries: Automotive OEM and supplier vehicle dynamics groups, off-highway and heavy equipment manufacturers.
Expected Outputs: Suspension kinematic and compliance curves, vehicle handling metrics, ride comfort measures, component load histories under defined maneuvers.
Design Decisions Enabled: Tuning suspension geometry, bushing rates, and steering linkage design to hit target handling and ride characteristics before physical prototypes exist.

06

Durability Load Extraction for Structural FEA

A structural fatigue or durability study is only as good as the loads fed into it, and for any moving assembly, those loads are a direct product of the system's kinematics and dynamics — not a simplified static assumption. Adams computes the time-varying forces at every joint and interface as a mechanism or vehicle operates through a representative duty cycle, and those load histories, together with flexible-body representations of individual components, can be exported directly into Nastran or Marc for stress and fatigue analysis.

Typical Industries: Automotive chassis and suspension durability, off-highway equipment structural analysis, industrial machinery structural qualification.
Expected Outputs: Time-history load channels at each joint and interface, flexible-body load cases formatted for structural FEA import.
Design Decisions Enabled: Basing structural sizing and fatigue-life targets on real dynamic operating loads rather than conservative or simplified static estimates.

07

Co-Simulation with Control Systems

Many mechanisms and vehicles today are not purely mechanical — their motion is shaped by an active control system, whether that's an anti-lock braking controller, an active suspension, or a robotic motion controller. Through Adams Controls, the multibody model can be connected to block-diagram models built in tools such as Easy5 or MATLAB Simulink, or co-simulated with software that supports the FMI standard. Co-simulation couples the Adams multibody model with a controls environment, running both simultaneously so that the mechanical system's response feeds the controller's sensed inputs, and the controller's commanded outputs feed back as forces or motion into the mechanical model, at each solver time step. This is the only way to evaluate a mechatronic system's real closed-loop behavior.

Typical Industries: Automotive active safety and chassis control systems, robotics, aerospace actuation systems, industrial automation.
Expected Outputs: Coupled mechanical-and-control time-history results, closed-loop system response to defined control inputs and disturbances.
Design Decisions Enabled: Tuning control gains and mechanical hardware together, rather than assuming an idealized mechanical response when designing the controller.

08

Linearization & Vibration Modes of Mechanisms

A multibody mechanism's dynamic behavior is generally nonlinear — its effective stiffness and inertia change as it moves through its range of motion — but at any single configuration, the system's equations of motion can be linearized to extract natural frequencies and mode shapes, much as a structural modal analysis would for a fixed structure. This identifies vibration modes and resonance risk specific to a mechanism's operating position, which matters because a mechanism's dynamic characteristics at full extension can differ substantially from its characteristics at mid-travel or full retraction. The optional Adams Vibration module extends this to forced response in the frequency domain, with inputs such as swept sine, power spectral density (PSD), and rotational imbalance.

Typical Industries: Automotive suspension and driveline, aerospace deployable mechanisms, industrial equipment with cyclic or reciprocating motion.
Expected Outputs: Natural frequencies and mode shapes evaluated at a specified mechanism configuration, eigenvalue-based stability indicators.
Design Decisions Enabled: Identifying configurations where a mechanism's natural frequency risks coinciding with an operating excitation, before it shows up in testing.

09

Design Exploration & Mechanism Optimization

Because an Adams model is parametric, design variants can be explored systematically instead of one at a time. Adams Insight runs design-of-experiments (DOE) studies across selected model parameters, builds response surfaces, and shows which factors have the greatest effect on each response, so engineers can see how a change in link length, spring rate, damping, or actuator profile is likely to affect overall performance. Together with the ability to test models virtually, this supports virtual prototyping: many configurations can be evaluated before hardware is built.

Typical Industries: Any mechanism or machine design process where several parameters interact, such as linkages, cam and gear drives, actuated mechanisms and handling equipment.
Expected Outputs: Parameter sensitivities, response-surface assessments, and comparisons of design variants against defined performance measures.
Design Decisions Enabled: Choosing which design parameters matter most, and narrowing a design space before committing to detailed design or prototypes.

Product Modules

The Adams module family

The core Adams environment is extended by optional modules for flexibility, durability, vibration, controls, optimization, and machinery components. Module descriptions follow Cadence's Adams product brief; the exact modules and bundles in any quotation depend on the release and licence configuration, which GTECH ASIA confirms with you.

Adams View

The graphical interface for building, simulating, and post-processing models. Imports CAD geometry (neutral formats including STEP, IGES, DXF, DWG, and Parasolid), applies constraints, motions, and forces, and defines contacts, compliance, and friction.

Adams Solver

The analysis engine. It automatically formulates and solves the equations of motion for kinematic, static, quasi-static, and dynamic simulations, with parallel computation options, HHT integrators, and linear analysis capabilities.

Adams PostProcessor

Results in tabular and plotted form, comparison of multiple simulations, import of physical test data for model correlation, and collision and clearance studies.

Adams Modeler

A newer CAD-associative interface built on the Apex platform and powered by the Adams solver, with interoperability back to Adams View, as described in the Adams Modeler brochure.

Adams Flex

Integrates FEA-based flexible bodies (for example from Nastran) to represent structural compliance and predict loads and displacements more accurately; includes examination of the linear modes of a flexible model.

Adams ViewFlex

Creates flexible bodies entirely inside Adams View or Adams Car using built-in Nastran finite-element technology, reducing reliance on separate FEA software.

Adams Durability

Modal stress recovery of flexible bodies within Adams, export of loads to FEA software for detailed stress analysis, and integration with MSC Fatigue for component life prediction.

Adams Vibration

Forced-response analysis in the frequency domain over different operating points, using inputs such as swept sine, power spectral density (PSD), and rotational imbalance.

Adams Controls & Mechatronics

Adams Controls connects Adams models to block-diagram tools such as Easy5 and MATLAB Simulink, or to FMI-supported software, for co-simulation. Adams Mechatronics adds advanced pre-processing for complex control integrations.

Adams Insight

Design-of-experiments (DOE) studies, response-surface assessment, and factor-sensitivity analysis, with interactive web pages that let non-specialists explore what-if results.

Adams Machinery

A module family inside Adams View for common machine components such as gears, belts, chains, bearings, and cables, described in MSC and Cadence materials. Availability under current packaging is confirmed at quotation.

Adams Car & Driveline

Vertical products for building and testing virtual prototypes of complete vehicles, vehicle subsystems, and drivelines under road and test-rig conditions.

Typical Workflow

How these capabilities connect in practice

An Adams study moves from geometry, through motion and load results, to a structural solver downstream.

Build or import the multibody model

CAD geometry is imported and organized into the bodies that will make up the mechanism, using Adams Modeler's associative, drag-and-drop workflow to align the CAD structure with the intended model topology.

Direct geometry editing on a wheel/hub part in Adams Modeler using a push/pull tool — Direct geometry editing inside the multibody environment — pushing and pulling faces without a round-trip back to CAD.

Define joints, forces, and contacts

Revolute, translational, and other joint types are placed using geometry-feature picking; springs, dampers, bushings, and contact elements are added where the mechanism's real interfaces require them.

Choose rigid or flexible representation

Parts whose compliance affects the system's motion or load path are converted to flexible bodies through the automated flex-body generation step, while parts adequately represented as rigid are left as-is.

Run kinematic or dynamic simulation

A kinematic solve is used when motion is fully prescribed by the mechanism's constraints; a dynamic solve is used when motion needs to emerge from applied forces, masses, and inertias, including any co-simulated control system.

Extract loads or motion results

Joint forces, contact loads, displacement and acceleration time histories, and — where relevant — linearized natural frequencies are reviewed against the mechanism's performance requirements.

Export loads to a structural solver and iterate

Time-varying loads and flexible-body results are exported to Nastran or Marc for stress and durability analysis, results are correlated against physical test data where available, and the multibody model is updated for the next design iteration.

Semiconductor Testing Equipment

Adams for semiconductor test handlers and ATE mechanics

Evidence basis: Cadence does not publish an Adams case study specific to semiconductor test equipment. The applications below are potential use cases derived from verified Adams capabilities (multibody dynamics, contact and impact, flexible bodies, vibration analysis, controls co-simulation, and design exploration). They are not documented customer success stories. Adams addresses the mechanical side of this equipment only.

A

Test Handlers, IC Handling & Pick-and-Place Mechanisms

Pick-and-place heads, gantries, and transfer arms in test handlers accelerate, stop, and settle thousands of times per hour while carrying small, delicate packages. Residual vibration after each move, mechanical impact at pick and place, and the interaction of moving components can limit how quickly a device is positioned repeatably. A multibody model of the handling mechanism lets these effects be examined before the hardware exists.

Engineering Challenge: High acceleration and deceleration, vibration of slender arms or heads after a move, impact when a device is picked or placed, and interaction between moving components in automated loading and unloading, including robotic IC handling.
Relevant Adams Capability: Rigid- and flexible-body dynamics (Adams Flex or ViewFlex for compliant arms and end-effectors), contact and impact, actuator and linkage modeling, and controls co-simulation through Adams Controls.
Possible Simulation Approach: Build the handling mechanism from CAD; represent slender or lightweight members as flexible bodies; apply the motion profile or couple the motion controller; define contact at the pick and place interface; compare acceleration profiles and stiffness options through parameter studies.
Results to Evaluate: End-effector displacement and settling behavior over time, actuator force and torque, joint reaction loads, contact forces at pick and place, and natural frequencies relative to the motion profile.
Potential Design Benefit: Earlier understanding of vibration sources and load paths, comparison of motion profiles and stiffness choices before prototyping, and dynamic load inputs for structural checks in FEA.

B

Test Socket Actuation, Contacting & Insertion Mechanisms

Actuation mechanisms that press a device onto a test socket must deliver the required mechanical force within a short cycle, without damaging the package or the socket. The dynamic contact force at touchdown can differ markedly from the static force the mechanism is designed around, which is a classic multibody contact-and-impact problem.

Engineering Challenge: Dynamic contact force and mechanical impact at touchdown, over-travel and rebound, misalignment, and the effect of spring and linkage compliance on delivered force.
Relevant Adams Capability: Impact-based contact with friction models, springs, dampers and bushings with nonlinear characteristics, flexible bodies for compliant members, and kinematic and dynamic analysis of actuation linkages.
Possible Simulation Approach: Model the actuator, linkage, pusher, device, and socket guides; calibrate contact stiffness and damping against measured data where available; vary touchdown velocity, over-travel, and damping; export load histories to FEA for stress checks.
Results to Evaluate: Contact force history and peak impact force, rebound behavior, force transmitted into socket guides and supports, actuator effort, and alignment shift due to compliance.
Potential Design Benefit: Better insight into dynamic versus static contact loading, and a basis for tuning velocity profile, over-travel, and damping before hardware trials. Electrical contact behavior is outside the scope of Adams.

C

High-Speed Indexing & Precision Alignment Mechanisms

Indexers, rotary or linear transfer systems, and alignment mechanisms must move quickly and then settle within tight positional tolerances. Inertia, backlash, clearance, and compliance in gears, cams, belts, and linkages all affect repeatability and are difficult to separate in physical testing.

Engineering Challenge: Positioning and alignment errors, motion repeatability, start-stop vibration, and mechanical system stability at high speed.
Relevant Adams Capability: Kinematic and dynamic analysis, joint clearance and backlash effects, gear, belt, chain, and bearing components (Adams Machinery, where licensed), frequency-domain analysis with Adams Vibration, and design-of-experiments studies with Adams Insight.
Possible Simulation Approach: Model the drive train and indexing mechanism with realistic compliance and clearance; apply the motion law; examine sensitivity of settling behavior to stiffness, backlash, and inertia; identify resonance risk across the operating range.
Results to Evaluate: Position, velocity, and acceleration time histories, required torque, settling behavior, sensitivity of positional error to design parameters, and resonance maps.
Potential Design Benefit: Identification of the parameters that dominate positioning error, and earlier evaluation of mechanism behavior across design variants.

D

ATE Mechanical Systems & Test Fixtures

Automated Test Equipment includes mechanical subsystems such as test-head positioning and docking mechanisms, load and fixture mechanisms, and the machine frames that carry them. These carry significant mass, apply and react contact loads, and can transmit or amplify vibration.

Engineering Challenge: Mechanical loading during docking and clamping, balancing of heavy moving assemblies, and vibration transmitted through fixtures and supports.
Relevant Adams Capability: Static, quasi-static, and dynamic analysis, spring, damper, and counterbalance modeling, flexible bodies, and linearized or frequency-domain vibration analysis.
Possible Simulation Approach: Represent the positioning or fixture mechanism with its actuators and counterbalance elements; run docking and clamping sequences; examine forced response to representative excitations.
Results to Evaluate: Actuator and balance forces, joint and fixture reaction loads, docking-force histories, and vibration response at points of interest.
Potential Design Benefit: Sizing of actuators and supports against the loads they actually see, and early identification of vibration concerns.

Related published evidence. The closest published Adams examples are not semiconductor cases. Cadence's Rockwell Automation success story applies Adams to contact, impact, and interlock behavior in circuit-breaker mechanisms (see Published Examples), and published engineering research has used ADAMS to plan the motion of a transfer robot whose flexible end-effector causes residual vibration that reduces positioning accuracy.

Scope boundary. Adams does not perform signal-integrity, power-integrity, electromagnetic, semiconductor-device, or detailed thermal simulation, and does not model electrical test performance. Those belong to dedicated tools; Adams complements them by describing how the equipment moves and loads its structure.

Electronics Manufacturing Automation

Mechanical system dynamics for electronics production equipment

Evidence basis: These are potential applications of verified Adams capabilities to electronics manufacturing machinery, not documented Cadence customer cases. Adams evaluates motion behavior, mechanical loading, contact and impact, vibration, positioning accuracy, and dynamic forces. It does not simulate the electrical or thermal behavior of the electronics being produced.

PCB Handling & Transfer Systems

Conveyors, lifts, grippers, and transfer mechanisms that move boards through a line. Adams can examine board acceleration, gripper and clamp contact loads, and the motion of transfer linkages and belt or chain drives (Adams Machinery, where licensed).

Robotic Assembly Equipment

Robot arms and pick-and-place heads for component assembly. Multibody models give joint loads, end-effector motion, and the effect of arm flexibility on settling, with controller behavior included through co-simulation.

Automated Inspection Machinery

Inspection gantries and camera or probe positioners need stable, repeatable motion. Adams can show how acceleration profiles, structural flexibility, and frame vibration influence positional behavior, and where resonances fall.

Precision Motion Systems

Stages, gantries, and cam- or linkage-driven positioners. Studies cover inertia, compliance, backlash, and the sensitivity of positioning accuracy to design parameters, using Adams Vibration and Adams Insight where relevant.

Electronic Component Handling

Feeders, pickup nozzles, and placement mechanisms that repeatedly make and break contact with small parts. Contact and impact modeling helps evaluate touchdown forces and rebound behavior.

Production Automation & High-Speed Machinery

Assembly lines, automated test stations, and mechanical test equipment combine many linked mechanisms. A system-level multibody model shows how motion, dynamic loads, and timing interact across the machine, and provides loads for FEA-based durability checks.

Industries Served

Where these capabilities are put to work

Cadence names automotive, aerospace, robotics, and machinery among the industries that rely on Adams.

Automotive & Vehicle Dynamics

Full-vehicle handling and ride simulation, suspension kinematics and compliance tuning, steering linkage design, and driveline dynamics, alongside durability load extraction for chassis and suspension component fatigue studies.

Aerospace Mechanisms

Landing-gear deployment and retraction dynamics, control-surface actuation linkages, and other deployable mechanisms where motion, timing, and joint loads must be verified across the full range of operation.

Industrial Machinery

Linkage and cam mechanism design, robotic motion analysis, and machine dynamics studies where joint loads and cycle timing directly affect equipment reliability and throughput.

Off-Highway & Heavy Equipment

Boom, arm, and linkage dynamics for excavators, loaders, and similar equipment, plus suspension and driveline load extraction feeding into structural durability analysis for frames operating in high-load, high-cycle environments.

Robotics & Manufacturing Automation

Robot and manipulator motion, joint loads, and mechatronic behavior with control-system integration, plus the handling, assembly, and transfer equipment used in automated production.

Semiconductor & Electronics Equipment

Potential applications in test handlers, ATE mechanisms, and electronics production machinery, described in the sections above. These are inferred from verified Adams capabilities and are not documented Cadence customer cases.

Precision Mechanical Systems & Appliances

Switching mechanisms, appliance dynamics, and other precision assemblies where contact, friction, and nonlinear components dominate behavior, often with structural FEA coupled in.

Published Examples

Documented Adams applications

These examples are drawn from Cadence publications. Results are those reported for each organization's own programme; they are not a guarantee of results in other applications.

Rockwell Automation

Circuit-breaker and contactor mechanisms: turn-on, thermal and magnetic trip, turn-off, interlock, and jump-on/off phases simulated in Adams Solver, with exported loads used for FEM stress and deflection checks. Cadence reports more than 120 virtual iterations and USD 1.4 million in testing and prototype cost savings for this programme.

Samsung — washing machine mechanism

Adams–Marc co-simulation was used to include nonlinear structural behavior (for example the gasket) in multibody simulation, enabling comparison of gasket designs at both system and component level, per Cadence materials.

Electric rope shovel

An Adams model with a flexible boom was used to calculate dynamic loads for fatigue life prediction. Cadence materials report a 40% shorter development cycle and 50% fewer physical tests.

Tractor driveline

Adams Machinery gear and bearing modules were used to model a driveline. Cadence materials report predicting the results of a testing campaign that takes several months with two weeks of simulation.

Mechanical–hydraulic coupling

Adams–Simulink co-simulation of swing, boom, arm, and bucket motion with hydraulic dynamics. Cadence materials report reduced development cost by 10% and shorter time to market by 20%.

Engineering Benefits

What engineering teams can gain

Benefits depend on the application, model fidelity, and the quality of input data. Simulation supports engineering decisions; it does not replace validation testing.

Better understanding of system dynamics

See how motion, forces, and interactions develop over time across the whole assembly, rather than inferring them from isolated component checks.

Early evaluation of mechanical designs

Compare concepts and design variants virtually, before hardware is built and while changes are still inexpensive.

Investigation of dynamic loading

Obtain time-varying joint, contact, and actuator loads, and pass them to Nastran or Marc for stress and durability analysis.

Identification of vibration concerns

Examine natural frequencies and forced response so that resonance risks can be recognized early in the design.

Evaluation of mechanism behavior

Check travel, timing, clearance, contact, and interference across the full range of motion and operating conditions.

Support for virtual prototyping

Combine mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electronic, and control systems in one virtual prototype to reduce reliance on physical prototypes.

Interoperability

Where Adams fits in a wider simulation stack

Adams exports time-varying joint and interface loads, along with flexible-body representations of individual components, directly into Nastran and Marc for structural stress and fatigue analysis. Digimat-characterized material models can inform the structural properties assigned to flexible bodies representing composite or plastic components. Co-simulation couples Adams with controls environments such as Simulink so mechanical and control-system behavior are solved together.

Nastran

Receives time-varying joint and interface loads, along with flexible-body representations, for structural stress and durability analysis.

Marc

Imports Adams flexible-body results as Modal Neutral Files, including nonlinear preload effects, for coupled nonlinear durability studies.

Digimat

Supplies calibrated material properties for flexible bodies representing composite or plastic mechanism components.

Controls Environments

Simulink and similar tools co-simulate with Adams so mechanical motion and active control logic are solved together, not in isolation.

FAQ

Frequently asked technical questions

What's the difference between a kinematic and a dynamic simulation in Adams?

A kinematic simulation is used when a mechanism's motion is fully determined by its geometry and constraints, so no force balance is solved. A dynamic simulation solves the full equations of motion, letting position, velocity, and acceleration emerge from applied forces, masses, and inertias, and is required whenever the mechanism has unconstrained degrees of freedom or the forces themselves are the quantity of interest.

When does a part need to be modeled as flexible instead of rigid?

When the part's deflection under operating loads is large enough to meaningfully change the mechanism's motion, timing, or load path — long or thin linkage members, large panels, or components whose natural frequency falls within the mechanism's operating range are typical candidates. If a part's stiffness is high relative to the loads it sees, a rigid-body representation is faster to solve and sufficiently accurate.

How do loads from Adams get used in a fatigue or durability study?

Adams computes time-varying forces at every joint and contact interface as the mechanism or vehicle runs through a representative duty cycle. Those load time-histories, together with flexible-body data for the components involved, are exported to Nastran or Marc, where they're combined with material S-N or e-N curves to predict fatigue life — using real dynamic loading rather than an assumed static equivalent.

What is co-simulation, and when is it needed?

Co-simulation runs the Adams multibody model and a controls environment like Simulink together, exchanging data at each solver time step so the mechanical system's motion feeds the controller's inputs and the controller's outputs feed back as forces or motion into the mechanical model. It's needed whenever a mechanism's behavior is shaped by active control — braking systems, active suspensions, robotic actuation.

How does Adams Modeler differ from Adams View?

Both run on the same underlying Adams solver. Adams Modeler is a newer interface built on the Apex platform, aimed at simplifying core mechanism-modeling tasks through CAD-associative geometry picking, drag-and-drop assembly restructuring, and automated flexible-body generation. Adams View remains available for its established, more detailed modeling capabilities, and the two interfaces interoperate.

Can Adams evaluate vibration and resonance risk, or is that a structural-analysis-only question?

Adams can linearize a mechanism's equations of motion at a given operating configuration to extract natural frequencies and mode shapes specific to that position — useful because a mechanism's dynamic characteristics can change substantially across its range of travel. This complements, rather than replaces, a full structural modal analysis of individual components in a solver like Nastran.

Can Adams be applied to semiconductor test handlers and automated test equipment (ATE) mechanisms?

Adams simulates the mechanical side of such equipment: motion, dynamic loads, contact and impact, flexible-member vibration, and actuator or linkage behavior. Cadence does not publish an Adams case study specific to semiconductor test equipment, so these are potential applications derived from verified Adams capabilities rather than documented customer cases. A suitability discussion starts with the mechanism, the motion profile, and the results you need to evaluate.

Does Adams perform electrical, signal-integrity or thermal simulation for electronics equipment?

No. Adams is a mechanical multibody dynamics solver. Signal integrity, power integrity, electromagnetic, semiconductor-device, PCB electrical, and detailed thermal analyses are performed with other, dedicated tools. Adams can complement them by providing the motion and mechanical-loading side of the equipment.

Technical Resources

Documentation for this solution

Explore technical documentation and product resources to learn more about the capabilities, applications and engineering workflows supported by this solution.

GTECH ASIA supplies and supports Cadence Adams licensing for engineering teams across Malaysia and Southeast Asia, with HRD Corp certified training available for teams building in-house multibody dynamics capability. Tell us about your mechanism, machine, or test equipment and we will discuss how Adams can be applied.

Talk to an Engineer → Request Product Brochure → View Adams Training →