Calculating direct Blocked Forces

On this page, you will learn all the necessary steps to calculate Blocked Forces using the direct force method in SOURCE. At the end, you will find some additional steps that VIBES recommends performing to check the quality of your data.

Essential steps

Import operational data

To analyze your operational data, you need to import them into SOURCE. SOURCE supports ATFX and MAT files. You can do a bulk import of multiple files at once, by importing the folder that contains them all.

To import operational data, complete the next steps:

1. Drag and drop the operational data into the Operational Data card.

or

1. Click on the + button in the Operational Data card.
2. Browse for the data.

Set up channels

To do an analysis, you need to set up your channels. In particular, you have to:

• Define the Master Channels.
• Set the correct channel type.

Define the Master channels

Before jumping to the analysis, you need to set which channels SOURCE will use for the calculation, and set them as Masters.

To set the channels as Masters, you have to:

1. Click on the Channel Mapping icon.
2. Select on the left the channels that should be set as Masters.
3. Drag and drop them in the Master channels column.

Set the correct channel type

The next step consists of setting the correct channel type. For this type of analysis, you need to set the following type:

• Force gauges channels: set as Indicator Forces.

To change the channel type, complete the next steps:

1. Click on the Channels icon.
2. In the Master channels column (on the right side), select the channel(s) to be edited.
3. Right-click on it/them.
4. Select Set Channel Type.
5. Select the correct type.

Set up Virtual Points

Before doing the analysis, you need to set up the Virtual Points. In particular, you have to:

1. Create the Virtual Points.
2. Add the Virtual Point DoFs to the Master channels.
3. Check and edit the VP position and orientation.
4. Set the correct channel type.

Create Virtual Points

To calculate Blocked Forces, you first need to define Virtual Points. To do so:

1. Click the Channels icon.
2. Go to the Edit mode.
3. Select the channels that belong to the same Virtual Point.
4. Right-click and select Create Virtual Point.
5. Exit the edit mode.

Add VP DoFs to the Master channels

After defining the Virtual Points, you need to add the VP Degrees of Freedom to the Master channels. To do so, complete the following steps:

1. Click the Virtual Points icon to open the Virtual Point card.
2. Select the created Virtual Point.
3. In the Channels card, select the Force channels just created.
4. Right-click and select Add to Master Channels.

Check VP positioning

After defining the Virtual Points, you need to check if it is positioned and oriented correctly. If not, you have to edit it.

To do so, complete the next steps:

1. Click the Virtual Points icon to open the Virtual Point card.
2. Check the Virtual Point position and orientation.
3. Edit the fields if some information is not correct.

Set the channel type

After creating the new channels, you need to check whether they are of the correct type. If they are not automatically set as VP Forces, you need to edit the channel type, following the instructions above.

Calculate Blocked Forces

After importing the data and setting the channels, you can proceed to make the analysis and calculate Blocked Forces.

To calculate Blocked Forces, complete the next steps:

1. Go to the Analyze module.
2. Click the + button at the top left. A menu will appear.
3. Select Direct Blocked Forces. A new analysis is created.
4. Select the analysis.
5. Click on Operational Data in the Inputs card and select the operational data you want to analyze.
6. Click on Channels in the Inputs card and check whether the correct channels are selected.
7. Go to Settings and edit them according to your preferences, if needed.
8. Click on the calculator symbol next to your analysis, to run it.
9. Click on Results.
10. Drag and drop the data you want to plot in the plotting area.

VIBES recommendation

Create sequences

If you are not interested in the full dataset, but just in some portions, it is possible to extract the data of interest by cropping segments and merging them into sequences. This is only possible for Time Series.

To create segments and sequences, follow the instructions at this link.

Check ODS