Reduced bases for nonlinear structural dynamic systems: A comparative study

The presented work provides an overview of some commonly used approaches for generating reduced bases for discrete nonlinear dynamic systems. It investigates the performance and the robustness of these bases if they are applied in a reduction-by-projection procedure on different test cases. The bases are created from the Linear Normal Modes, the Ritz-vectors, the Proper and the Smooth Orthogonal Decomposition method, the A Priori Reduction, the Centroidal Voronoi Tessellation and the Local Equivalent Linear Stiffness Method. Second-Order Terms and an Enhanced Proper Orthogonal Decomposition formulation are included as variants. The test cases are small dimensional, locally or entirely nonlinear system subjected to a harmonic or an impulse force excitation. The double objective of this numerical study is, first, to determine which bases are most adequate for a given combination of nonlinearity and excitation and, second, to which extend the bases exhibit an inherent robustness if the parameterisation of the excitation is changed. A specific multicriteria decision analysis score is developed to assess the basesʹ performance. As a major result, a strong dependence of the performance of the bases on the type of excitation is established and thus some bases become more adequate for a certain situation than others. Also a lack of robustness for all considered bases can be observed. This situation improves in most cases if the basis is generated with the most critical values of the parameter.