Reduction of substructural interface degrees of freedom in flexibility-based component mode synthesis

A flexibility-based component mode synthesis (CMS) is proposed for reduced-order modelling of dynamic behaviour of large structures. The approach employs partitioning via the localized Lagrange multiplier method. The use of the localized Lagrange multipliers leads to, unlike the classical Lagrange multipliers, a linearly independent set of interface forces without any redundancies at multiply connected interface nodes. The flexibility-based CMS method has shown significant advantages over the classical Craig–Bampton method. A key feature of the method is its substructural mode selection criterion that is independent of loading conditions. Unlike the majority of available CMS approaches, where one retains the full dimension of partition boundary degrees of freedom (DOFs), the flexibility-based method allows to reduce significantly the interface DOFs. The reduction of interface DOFs represents the major contribution of the present communication. The efficiency of the proposed approach is demonstrated on an analysis of a simple plate partitioned and of a more complex 3D structure, both partitioned into several substructures. Copyright q 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd