A Study on Direct Sensitivity Identification of Structures by Experimental Data and Optimum Designs Based on the Sensitivities

Recent advances in experimental modal analysis have afforded powerful tools for practical mechanical designs. The machines or those idealized models are subjected to impulsive or sinusoidal loads in the test and the obtained experimental data combined with the finite-element analysis can provide modal properties or property matrices. The optimum design methods have been of interest among practical designers since the optimizers for optimum designs were added to new versions of general computer programs for structural analysis and many programs were released. However, most of the optimum design methods were based on analytical moodels, for example, the finite- element models, and there are few papers by which to study an optimum design method utilizing experimental data. Thus, this report aims at presenting a new method of direct sensitivity identification of property matrices by utilizing experimental data, and a new approximate optimum design method based on the sensitivities. Fundamental examinations of the proposed methods were made through simple examples.