We show how spectral submanifold theory can be used to construct reduced-order models for harmonically excited mechanical systems with internal resonances. Efficient calculations of periodic and quasi-periodic responses with the reduced-order models are discussed in this paper and its companion, Part II, respectively. The dimension of a reduced-order model is determined by the number of modes involved in the internal resonance, independently of the dimension of the full system. The periodic responses of the full system are obtained as equilibria of the reduced-order model on spectral submanifolds. The forced response curve of periodic orbits then becomes a manifold of equilibria, which can be easily extracted using parameter continuation. To demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the reduction, we compute the forced response curves of several high-dimensional nonlinear mechanical systems, including the finite-element models of a von Kármán beam and a plate.@en

We apply two recently formulated mathematical techniques, Slow-Fast Decomposition (SFD) and Spectral Submanifold (SSM) reduction, to a von Kármán beam with geometric nonlinearities and viscoelastic damping. SFD identifies a global slow manifold in the full system which attracts solutions at rates faster than typical rates within the manifold. An SSM, the smoothest nonlinear continuation of a linear modal subspace, is then used to further reduce the beam equations within the slow manifold. This two-stage, mathematically exact procedure results in a drastic reduction of the finite-element beam model to a one-degree-of freedom nonlinear oscillator. We also introduce the technique of spectral quotient analysis, which gives the number of modes relevant for reduction as output rather than input to the reduction process.@en

Dynamical systems are often subject to algebraic constraints in conjunction with their governing ordinary differential equations. In particular, multibody systems are commonly subject to configuration constraints that define kinematic compatibility between the motion of different bodies. A full-scale numerical simulation of such constrained problems is challenging, making reduced-order models (ROMs) of paramount importance. In this work, we show how to use spectral submanifolds (SSMs) to construct rigorous ROMs for mechanical systems with configuration constraints. These SSM-based ROMs enable the direct extraction of backbone curves and forced response curves and facilitate efficient bifurcation analysis. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this SSM-based reduction procedure on several examples of varying complexity, including nonlinear finite-element models of multibody systems. We also provide an open-source implementation of the proposed method that also contains all details of our numerical examples.@en

Invariant manifolds are important constructs for the quantitative and qualitative understanding of nonlinear phenomena in dynamical systems. In nonlinear damped mechanical systems, for instance, spectral submanifolds have emerged as useful tools for the computation of forced response curves, backbone curves, detached resonance curves (isolas) via exact reduced-order models. For conservative nonlinear mechanical systems, Lyapunov subcenter manifolds and their reduced dynamics provide a way to identify nonlinear amplitude–frequency relationships in the form of conservative backbone curves. Despite these powerful predictions offered by invariant manifolds, their use has largely been limited to low-dimensional academic examples. This is because several challenges render their computation unfeasible for realistic engineering structures described by finite element models. In this work, we address these computational challenges and develop methods for computing invariant manifolds and their reduced dynamics in very high-dimensional nonlinear systems arising from spatial discretization of the governing partial differential equations. We illustrate our computational algorithms on finite element models of mechanical structures that range from a simple beam containing tens of degrees of freedom to an aircraft wing containing more than a hundred–thousand degrees of freedom.@en

For mechanical systems subject to periodic excitation, forced response curves (FRCs) depict the relationship between the amplitude of the periodic response and the forcing frequency. For nonlinear systems, this functional relationship is different for different forcing amplitudes. Forced response surfaces (FRSs), which relate the response amplitude to both forcing frequency and forcing amplitude, are then required in such settings. Yet, FRSs have been rarely computed in the literature due to the higher numerical effort they require. Here, we use spectral submanifolds (SSMs) to construct reduced-order models (ROMs) for high-dimensional mechanical systems and then use multidimensional manifold continuation of fixed points of the SSM-based ROMs to efficiently extract the FRSs. Ridges and trenches in an FRS characterize the main features of the forced response. We show how to extract these ridges and trenches directly without computing the FRS via reduced optimization problems on the ROMs. We demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach by calculating the FRSs and their ridges and trenches for a plate with a 1:1 internal resonance and for a shallow shell with a 1:2 internal resonance.@en

Model reduction of large nonlinear systems often involves the projection of the governing equations onto linear subspaces spanned by carefully selected modes. The criteria to select the modes relevant for reduction are usually problem-specific and heuristic. In this work, we propose a rigorous mode-selection criterion based on the recent theory of spectral submanifolds (SSMs), which facilitates a reliable projection of the governing nonlinear equations onto modal subspaces. SSMs are exact invariant manifolds in the phase space that act as nonlinear continuations of linear normal modes. Our criterion identifies critical linear normal modes whose associated SSMs have locally the largest curvature. These modes should then be included in any projection-based model reduction as they are the most sensitive to nonlinearities. To make this mode selection automatic, we develop explicit formulae for the scalar curvature of an SSM and provide an open-source numerical implementation of our mode-selection procedure. We illustrate the power of this procedure by accurately reproducing the forced-response curves on three examples of varying complexity, including high-dimensional finite-element models.@en

We propose a reformulation for a recent integral equations approach to steady-state response computation for periodically forced nonlinear mechanical systems. This reformulation results in additional speed-up and better convergence. We show that the solutions of the reformulated equations are in one-to-one correspondence with those of the original integral equations and derive conditions under which a collocation-type approximation converges to the exact solution in the reformulated setting. Furthermore, we observe that model reduction using a selected set of vibration modes of the linearized system substantially enhances the computational performance. Finally, we discuss an open-source implementation of this approach and demonstrate the gains in computational performance using three examples that also include nonlinear finite-element models.@en

We show how spectral submanifold (SSM) theory can be used to extract forced-response curves without any numerical simulation in high-degree-of-freedom, periodically forced mechanical systems. We use multivariate recurrence relations to construct the SSMs, achieving a major speed-up relative to earlier autonomous SSM algorithms. The increase in computational efficiency promises to close the current gap between studying lower-dimensional academic examples and analyzing larger systems obtained from finite-element modeling, as we illustrate on two different discretized damped-forced beam models. Using the exact reduction procedure via SSMs for obtaining forced response curves, we further demonstrate speed gains of several orders in magnitude relative to the available state-of-the-art continuation packages, while retaining accuracy.@en

We discuss an integral equation approach that enables fast computation of the response of nonlinear multi-degree-of-freedom mechanical systems under periodic and quasi-periodic external excitation. The kernel of this integral equation is a Green’s function that we compute explicitly for general mechanical systems. We derive conditions under which the integral equation can be solved by a simple and fast Picard iteration even for non-smooth mechanical systems. The convergence of this iteration cannot be guaranteed for near-resonant forcing, for which we employ a Newton– Raphson iteration instead, obtaining robust convergence. We further show that this integral equation approach can be appended with standard continuation schemes to achieve an additional, significant performance increase over common approaches to computing steady-state response.@en

Very high dimensional nonlinear systems arise in many engineering problems due to semi-discretization of the governing partial differential equations, e.g. through finite element methods. The complexity of these systems present computational challenges for direct application to automatic control. While model reduction has seen ubiquitous applications in control, the use of nonlinear model reduction methods in this setting remains difficult. The problem lies in preserving the structure of the nonlinear dynamics in the reduced order model for high-fidelity control. In this work, we leverage recent advances in Spectral Submanifold (SSM) theory to enable model reduction under well-defined assumptions for the purpose of efficiently synthesizing feedback controllers.@en