My task is to try and turn that into a dynamic simulation. Literally, a time-lapse movie.

Yes, and this is the same as solving numerically the differential equations defining the mechanics of your problem.

It is a quite common and easy to solve problem:

  1. Set the initial conditions of the system: initial angular speeds.
  2. Using your finite element analysis software, determine the force and torques
  3. Plug those values on the equations defining the mechanics of the system and get back the angular accelerations.
  4. Using some arbitrary small delta time, calculate the angular speed deltas that follow from the accelerations and then the new speeds, and from those the new position deltas and then the new positions.
  5. Goto 2.

How much computation power you need depends on the stability of the system. In practice that means picking smaller time deltas, or calculating them adaptively, or just using a better algorithm for the integration of the differential equations.

You will never know unless you just try.

In reply to Re^7: [OT] Forces. by salva
in thread [OT] Forces. by BrowserUk

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