Reduction of Finite Element Models of Complex Mechanical Components

There is an increasing interest in using detailed finite element models of individual components in multibody simulation with detailed contact analysis. Due to the large amount of degrees of freedoms in such models we need to develop reduced models with fewer degrees of freedoms that still capture the flexible body dynamics with sufficient accuracy. In this paper we investigate a static load case on a geometrically complex mechanical component. We use modal basis functions to describe the global deformations of the component and certain Krylov-modes to capture a localized load and to provide accurate coupling to the modal basis functions. We investigate how the overall accuracy depends on the number of modal basis functions and the number of Krylovmodes.