Extended component mode synthesis method for dynamic analysis of mechanical systems with local nonlinearities

Engineering structures are generally designed based on linear elasticity assumptions. However, it is difficult to describe the connected structures using a simple linear system, due to factors such as sliding and friction at interfaces, and variations in contact areas during vibration processes. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an approach to tackle such systems with interface nonlinearities. In this paper, we proposed an extended free-interface component mode synthesis method. According to the proposed method, the substructures are separated at the nonlinear interfaces. Then the component mode synthesis procedure is carried out. By reasonably neglecting the contributions of higher order modes to the damping and inertia terms, it is demonstrated that the nonlinear interface forces and their time derivatives can be expressed as functions of themselves, as well as modal displacements and velocities. This characteristic facilitates the synthesis of the reduced order models for substructures in the state space. Also owing to this operation, the original properties of nonlinear interface forces can be preserved as much as possible, without any linearization. This method is suitable for non-proportionally damped structures with local nonlinearities such as mechanical structures with nonlinear spring and dashpot connections, rotor-bearing systems and so on. It also may be an alternative for the dynamic analysis of jointed structures with contact nonlinearities. Two numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed method: (1) an eighteen degrees of freedom spring-dashpot-mass system with cubic spring and cubic dashpot interface connections is studied and (2) a more complex mechanical structure: a dual-rotor system with deep-groove ball bearing inter-shaft support. The numerical simulation results indicate that the dynamic responses of the reduced order model match very well with that of the full model, revealing the high accuracy of the proposed method with low computational costs.