Reduced-Order Dynamics of MFC-Actuated Plate

Macrofibre composite (MFC) actuated smart materials are highly flexible. Many degrees of freedom are required to analyse continuous flexible structures and monitor their dynamics which makes the process computationally expensive. Hence, the motivation of this study is to reduce the computational cost of real-time finite element solutions of such structures without compromising accuracy. Reduced-order modelling is an excellent alternative to mimic a complicated system into an efficient reduced-order system. In this study, ordinary differential equations are generated for MFC-actuated plate. The equations of motion are solved using the Newmark integration scheme. Two different reduction schemes have been used, i.e. system equivalent reduction and expansion process (SEREP) and proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). Both methods are shown to be equally efficient in substantially reducing the degrees of freedom of the entire structure and preserving all dynamic characteristics in the reduced system, along with high computational efficiency.