Characterizing the dynamics of 3-D elastic nonlinear continua using the method of proper orthogonal decomposition

A novel and systematic way is presented to characterize the modal structure of the free dynamics of three-dimensional elastic continua. In particular, the method of Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) for multi-field dynamics is applied to analyze the dynamics of prisms and moderately thick beams. A nonlinear finite element model is used to compute accurate approximations to free motions which in turn are processed by POD. The extension of POD to analyze the dynamics of three-dimensional elastic continua, which are multi-field coupled dynamical system, is carried out by vector and matrix quantization of the finite element dynamics. An important outcome of this study is the fact that POD provides the means to systematically identify the shapes of nonlinear normal modes of vibration of three-dimensional structures from high resolution finite element simulations.