Abstract

An effective substructure coupling technique that considers interface reduction is presented in this work. The dynamic behavior of the substructures is characterized by the dominant xed interface normal modes and by the static contribution of higher order modes. Interface reduction is accomplished by using a reduced number of characteristic constraint modes. The eectiveness of the proposed model reduction technique is demonstrated by means of numerical examples involving two structural models. Accurate reduced order models with a greatly reduced number of degrees of freedom are obtained. The eciency of the resultant formulation is then evaluated in the framework of modal sensitivity analysis and dynamic response characterization. Numerical results show that the technique allows an ecient modeling of the dynamics of a class of structural models. Keywords: Characteristic