Circuit Breaker: With silux™ you're in control
A low-voltage switch is meant to interrupt an electrical circuit on command, and as quickly as possible.
The lever that is shown in the lower left picture, is the true electric contact. This lever must be moved off the pad (not shown in the picture) with a mechanical swiveling motion.
A strong tension spring provides the energy source: this can be seen in the upper part of the picture. A toggle switch system increases the lever's angular velocity, allowing it to jump away from the pad as quickly as possible.

The functioning of the system is triggered by activating the handle (arrow) directly on the screen.

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Aerial Cable-Railways: silux™ tells you exactly what will happen when there is a crash
A Swiss firm built the first aerial cable-railway with a two-level cabin. In this field, safety regulations are as stringent as those that prevail in aircraft production. The whole system must be tested for all conceivable incidents and safety must be assured in all cases. A possible scenario is an emergency stop directly over a cable pylon. In this special case, rough estimates show that the suspension of the cabin will collide with the so-called "saddle" of the pylon. The whole construction of the suspension has to be checked with a finite-element program, also for this special case. The problem is that we don't know the magnitude of the force or the duration over which it affects the cabin suspension upon impact. At this point, silux comes into the picture.

The program simulates not only the dynamic relationships between all the individual parts and of the system as a whole in every detail, but also allows for the analytical investigation of specific forces and of other physical parameters.

Watch: With silux™ you can examine the whole thing more closely
silux can process drawings from other computer programs and computer systems. Data from external sources is imported with a standard exchange format (DXF). silux thus has an interface with existing CAD-systems. Although silux provides all the functions necessary to guarantee independant operation, silux is not meant to replace CAD-systems. It's clear though that silux provides considerably enhanced performance to any CAD-system. silux provides all the tools necessary to import data, to update it if need be and to create a working simulation model.

Statistics: silux™ leaves (almost) nothing to chance
Let a number of marbles fall from a funnel through a grid of rods. At each rod, the marble may fall either to the right or to the left. The chance in a statistical average is always the same for both sides. At the lower part of the cascade, the marbles fall into different rows. Following the rules of probability theory, a greater number of marbles must appear in the middle rows.With statistical rules and methods, you can show that a great number of events in the statistical average forms a Gaussian bell-curve.

Locomotive: With silux™ you understand and improve what has already been done
This drawing of a stem locomotive (close to 7000 single elements) has been imported into silux software with the help of DXF exchange format, where it has been extended into a functioning silux simulation program.

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Fall Tower: If you fall from the sky - silux™ shows you the way how to land smoothly
If you fall from the sky - silux™ shows you the way how to land smoothlyThe 146 m high fall-tower in Bremen/Germany belongs to the University of Bremen.
The task of the ZARM (Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity) is toprovide an inexpensive and quick alternative to space flights. Scientific experiments are put into a fall capsule and are then let drop freely in an evacuated tube. During a flight of 4.7 seconds, weightlessness of a very high quality is achieved. At the end of a free fall, the capsule is stopped by an 8 m high pile of styrofoam granules. A deceleration of 30-50 times the Earth's acceleration takes place.
Many scientific experiments are currently being carried out all over the world insuch towers. This includes many experiments from the field of fluid dynamics, for example, the combustion in engines under ideal circumstances, etc.

The current silux experiment is meant to research the stopping procedure of the capsule in the styrofoam pile and to compare results with experimental measurements. The deceleration of the capsule during the breaking procedue is investigated experimentally with different capsule modules.

Collision of planets: With silux™ you can experience the apocalypse ... now!
The most likely theories state that the Earth's moon was created by a collision of the Earth with another planet. Studies of rocks from the moon have especially supported this theory. The other planet was about the size of Mars and hit the Earth in a grazing collision. Some of the material that was thrown up fell back to Earth. Other material got into orbit around the Earth and created the moon. It is also possible that the left-over material from this collision formed the asteroid belt. This expanse of rubble islocated between the paths of Mars and Jupiter.

One-legged hopper with telescop spring
The idea for the one-legged hopper came from the following homepage: www.cim.mcgill.ca ARL, Ambulatory Robotics Laboratory, Center for Intelligent Machines, McGill University Montréal, Québec, Canada.The monopod robots mentioned in this source serve as platforms for examining control mechanisms during so-called "passive dynamic hopping".silux was used to examine the same type of problem with a virtual robot model. Various control functions were simulated with silux and comparisons between control systems and robot behavior were made.