Chrono::Electronics: An Open-Source Simulation Package for Complex Electro-Mechanical Problems

The growing relevance of mechatronic applications -- whose hallmark is a strong coupling between mechanical and electrical domains -- has led to renewed interest in the high-fidelity and expeditious simulation of electro-mechanical systems. Such simulations are particularly useful in robotics and automation, when the system has a mechanical part connected to various electromagnetic devices, e.g., actuators or sensors. To support this class of applications, in a previous work, we introduced \texttt{Chrono::Electronics} -- an open-source co-simulation solution for electro-mechanical systems. \texttt{Chrono::Electronics} is designed to combine the multibody dynamics open-source engine Project Chrono (PC), with the versatile open-source circuit simulator NGSpice (NGS), to solve complex dynamic interactions between the mechanical and electronics domains. In this contribution we outline the structure of the proposed library and report on its validation against experimental data. In the validation study, for calibration purposes, we rely on a Bayesian inference methodology for the estimation and characterization of the parameters of brushed DC motors, which represent a family of actuators widely employed in mechatronic applications. The motor thus characterized is later used to validate the new developments integrated into the library, demonstrating the framework's scalability and potential across a range of applications where accurate modeling of electro-mechanical interactions is important.