Dynamic substructuring

Dynamic Substructuring (DS) is an engineering tool used to model and analyse the dynamics of mechanical systems by means of its components or substructures. Using the dynamic substructuring approach one is able to analyse the dynamic behaviour of substructures separately and to later on calculate the assembled dynamics using coupling procedures. Dynamic substructuring has several advantages over the analysis of the fully assembled system:

• Substructures can be modelled in the domain that is most appropriate, e.g. experimentally obtained substructures can be combined with numerical models.
• Large and/or complex systems can be optimized on substructure level.
• Numerical computation load can be reduced as solving several substructures is computationally less demanding than solving one large system.
• Substructure models of different development groups can be shared and combined without exposing the modelling details.

Dynamic substructuring is particularly tailored to simulation of mechanical vibrations, which has implications for many product aspects such as sound / acoustics, fatigue / durability, comfort and safety. Also, dynamic substructuring is applicable to any scale of size and frequency. It is therefore a widely used paradigm in industrial applications ranging from automotive and aerospace engineering to design of wind turbines and high-tech precision machinery.