NEW APPROXIMATION FOR STEADY-STATE RESPONSE OF GENERAL DAMPED SYSTEMS

A new approximation for steady-state dynamic displacements, which capt ures the nonlinearities associated with resonance, is presented, This approximation is based on modal analysis and is valid for general damp ed structures, which include the case of actively controlled structure s. Intermediate design variable and intermediate response quantity con cepts are used to enhance the accuracy of the approximations. when the se high-quality approximations are used within the context of the appr oximation concepts approach, the overall efficiency of the design synt hesis process is improved by reducing the number of complete analyses required for convergence. Numerical results that illustrate the effect iveness of the method are presented.