Patent ID: 7209872

Claim:
A design support system which supports a user to design a convey path constituted by mechanical components by simulating a behavior of a flexible medium conveyed in the convey path, comprising: a flexible medium model creating apparatus which creates a flexible medium model expressing a flexible medium, which is conveyed in a convey path as a design target in which an arrangement of mechanical components of the convey path is defined in advance, by using a plurality of stiff body elements each having a mass and one pair of rotational and translational springs which connect each adjacent pair of stiff body elements and have spring constants that change depending on a direction of flexural deformation of the flexible medium; an input apparatus which inputs a convey condition in the convey path and frictional coefficients between the mechanical components arranged in the convey path and the flexible medium; a motion calculation apparatus which time-serially calculates a behavioral state of the flexible medium in the convey path by numerical simulation on the basis of the flexible medium model and the input convey condition and frictional coefficients; and a result display apparatus which displays the behavioral state of the flexible medium which is calculated by said motion calculation means, wherein if a bending moment of each of the stiff body elements which is calculated by said motion calculation apparatus by numerical simulation is analyzed, and it is determined that a rotation moment larger than a predetermined value has locally occurred in the flexible medium, said flexible medium model creating apparatus increases a segmentation count that has been set in segmenting the flexible medium into a plurality of stiff body elements, wherein when coordinate values of two points of end portions of the flexible medium and a segmentation count between the two points are defined, said flexible medium model creating apparatus segments the flexible medium into a plurality of stiff body elements arranged at equal intervals between the two points.