An exact model reduction procedure for mechanical systems Original Research Article

This paper gives details of an exact model reduction procedure for the dynamic analysis of general mechanical systems. In this procedure, the system is first transformed into an equivalent one-dimensional (ID) lumped mass-spring-damping system by coordinate transformations. The 1D lumped system is further reduced into a lower order model with arbitrarily selected degrees of freedom. Three numerical examples are given for a distributed lumped mass-spring system, a truss frame structure and a cantilever plate.