A method for modal reanalysis of topological modifications of structures

A method for structural modal reanalysis for three cases of topological modifications, the number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) is unchanged, decreased, and increased, is presented. In this method, the newly added DOFs are linked to the original DOFs of the modified structure by means of the dynamic reduction so as to obtain the condensed equation. The methods for forming the stiffness and mass increments, K and M, resulting from the three cases of topological modifications of structures are discussed. The extended Kirsch method is used to improve the accuracy of the starting solutions of the initial structure. And then, the eigenvectors of newly added DOFs resulting from topological modification can be recovered. At last, the Rayleigh–Ritz analysis is used to evaluate the eigenvalues and eigenvectors for the modified structure. Three numerical examples are given to illustrate the applications of the present approach. The results show that the proposed method is effective for structural modal reanalysis of three cases of the topological modifications and it is easy to implement on a computer. By comparing with previous method, it can be seen that the present method can give good approximate eigenvalues and eigenvectors, even if the topological modifications are very large