Substructure system identification and synthesis

This paper explores the possibility of performing system identification at the substructure level and then synthesizing the results to obtain a mathematical model for the assembled structure. The study here shows that in order to enforce interface compatibility and equilibrium conditions to the substructure test data, it is necessary to place collocated actuator/sensor pair at every interface degree-of-freedom. Procedures for assembling substructure transfer function data, substructure state-space models, and substructure Markov parameters are presented. Testing difficulties and possible solutions are also discussed. A numerical simulation example is included to illustrate the proposed substructure synthesis methods.