Seminr : Daniel Rixen

The paradigm of coupling submodels of a large assembly is often used in mechanical engineering i.e. to distribute the computational load over several processors (parallel computing), or to reduce substructure-wise the size of numerical models (model reduction). The same paradigm can be applied to build an experimental dynamic model of complex (mainly linear) assemblies: components are measured separately, then assembled (possibly with numerical components) to form an experimental (or hybrid) model.

Although the basic theory of experimental substructuring is rather straightforward, obtaining experimental models of components that lead to an accurate representation of the assembly is a hard challenge and requires special attention during the measurement campaigns and in the numerical formulation of the coupled assembly.

In the presentation, we will discuss techniques developed over the recent years to enable accurate experimental substructuring, and explain the concept of blocked forces needed to characterize an operational source and to perform transfer path analysis with the assembled models. We will also show some application examples and the way these approaches can be used to identify the dynamics of joints between components.