Nonintrusive Structural Dynamic Reduced Order Modeling for Large Deformations: Enhancements for Complex Structures

This paper focuses on the development of nonlinear reduced order modeling techniques for the prediction of the response of complex structures exhibiting “large” deformations, i.e., a geometrically nonlinear behavior, which are nonintrusive, i.e., the structure is originally modeled within a commercial finite element code. The present investigation builds on a general methodology successfully validated in recent years on simpler beam and plate structures by: (i) developing a novel identification strategy of the reduced order model parameters that enables the consideration of the large number of modes (>50 say) that would be needed for complex structures, and (ii) extending a step-by-step strategy for the selection of the basis functions used to represent accurately the displacement field. The above novel developments are successfully validated on the nonlinear static response of a nine-bay panel structure modeled with 96,000 degrees of freedom within Nastran.