CMS with Large Contact Patches

Abstract

Component Mode Synthesis (CMS) and specifically Craig-Bampton Reductions (CBRs) are popular methods for constructing reduced-complexity models of substructures for structural dynamics modeling. When the interfaces between these substructures are of limited complexity, such as a discrete set of bolts, these approaches work well, providing compact and portable models. With large interfaces relative to the volume, such as contact patches, these approaches become less convenient. Interfaces are generally represented as a series of nodes that do not retain element face (interface) topology that may be critical to using more advanced contact algorithms or providing for contact between substructures. The interface may also lead to sufficient model complexity that each reduced model should be decomposed into multiple domains when included in system level models. In this work we outline the construction of a CBR where interface topology is retained so that models with CBR-CBR contact can be constructed and demonstrated with a set of example problems. We also investigate simple approaches to decomposing the CBR into multiple domains for parallel computing and their relative efficiency.