Component Synthesis Method for Transient Response of Nonproportionally Damped Structures

A component synthesis technique for calculating the transient response of nonproportionally damped structures is presented in this paper. The structure can be composed of nonproportionally damped components or proportionally damped components with different damping factors, and the components are joined by connecting elements at their boundaries. In the synthesis technique, the transient responses of the nonproportionally damped components are defined by a newly developed direct integration method, which keeps the analytical solution of the mode displacement superposition method for the proportionally damped structure with the interpolation of excitation forces as the input. The structural responses are obtained based on the geometric compatibility and the force equilibrium conditions of the connecting elements. The proposed method is most suitable for the recalculation of structural responses induced by modification of the connecting elements. Numerical examples are given to validate the correctness and to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.