Improved component mode synthesis and variants

This survey focuses on the two known model order reduction schemes being widely integrated in various commercial finite element packages, namely, the static and dynamic condensation methods. The advantages as well as the corresponding drawbacks have been extensively analyzed in several papers throughout the last decades. Based on combining the beneficial properties of the aforementioned methods, several alternative reduction methodologies are outlined in this paper, i.e., the generalized improved reduction system method, the generalized component mode synthesis and the improved component mode synthesis with its generalized version, which incorporate in a more efficient way the system’s inertia terms. Therefore, the associated error regarding higher frequency ranges of interest is better controlled. Basis of these methodologies is the so-called master and slave degrees of freedom partitioning, the right selection of which highly influences the reduced order model’s dynamics. The methods are tested and verified on a rather small three-dimensional bar structure and on the lever part of a turbocharger’s variable turbine geometry. Several reduced order models are generated by varying both the number of Craig–Bampton modes and the selection of the required master degrees of freedom. A comparison is conducted based on the modal criterion of the corresponding eigenvectors and the associated computation time required.