Dynamically substructured system frameworks with strict separation of numerical and physical components

SUMMARY A dynamically substructured system (DSS) consists of both physical and numerical components. It is used for the testings of the dynamics of some systems arising from engineering problems to overcome the drawbacks of conventional testing methods. One of the key issues influencing the DSS testing accuracy is from the synchronization of the physical and numerical components. This synchronization can be achieved by a controller (called DSS controller). To facilitate the DSS controller design, this paper develops a sophisticated DSS framework with its variations to further enhance the analysis and design of DSS. The main feature of the proposed DSS framework is that it has a strict separation of numerical and physical substructures, which can enable one to explicitly identify the relations of the substructures and signals within a DSS and thus greatly facilitate more elegant treatments of DSS problems, such as DSS establishment, conversion of different DSSs, and uncertainties and measurement noise incorporation in robust control. The proposed framework and its variations unify many DSS problems. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.