A SOLUTION TO THE INVERSE DYNAMICS PROBLEM FOR LIGHTLY DAMPED FLEXIBLE STRUCTURES USING A MODEL APPROACH

A systematic procedure to solve inverse dynamics problems related to lightly damped flexible structures is presented. In structural dynamics the inverse dynamics problem is to estimate the unknown forcing function using limited response measurements. Model characteristics are utilized to enhance the computational efficiency and solution accuracy by systematically reducing the order of the finite element model representing the structure. Unlike the usual dynamic programming approach, which is often computationally expensive, the proposed procedure uses a computationally efficient pseudo-inverse solution. A numerical example using a ten-bay truss structure as a testbed is presented to demonstrate the proposed procedure.