Project Chrono — The Complete Guide: Free Multibody, Vehicle and Granular Dynamics Simulation
Project Chrono is an open-source (BSD-3-Clause) physics simulation infrastructure written in C++, with a Python interface called PyChrono. It is used in robotics, vehicle dynamics and autonomous vehicle research.
Project Chrono
Project Chrono consortium
A physics simulation engine for multibody dynamics, vehicles, granular material and finite elements, in C++ and Python.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Multibody systems — joints, motors and actuators.
- Contact and friction — collisions between bodies.
- Finite elements — flexible beams, cables, shells and solids.
- Vehicles — wheeled and tracked vehicles.
- Granular material — soil, sand and bulk material interacting with machines.
Who it suits
Chrono is a library rather than a program with a user interface, so it requires programming. It suits researchers and engineers building a custom simulation — for example an off-road vehicle on soft soil or a robot arm with contact. Use is free for any purpose, including commercial work.
Related tools
For fast robot simulation with contact — MuJoCo. For physics simulation in Python — PyBullet. For flexible bodies in Python — Exudyn.
MuJoCo
Google DeepMind
A fast physics engine for robotics, biomechanics and machine learning.
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PyBullet
Bullet Physics
A physics engine for robotics and reinforcement learning, driven from Python.
Get it from the vendor
Exudyn
Johannes Gerstmayr (University of Innsbruck)
Flexible multibody dynamics simulation — rigid and flexible bodies, reduced finite element models and robotics, in Python.
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MBDyn — Multibody Dynamics
Politecnico di Milano
Solver for the dynamics of multibody mechanical systems, including flexible bodies and aeronautical systems.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Project Chrono covers a rare combination of multibody dynamics, finite elements, vehicles and granular material — free and open, for anyone willing to write code.