Hybrid modeling for mechanical systems: Methodologies and applications

A serial hybrid modeling approach is applied to mechanical systems. Here, h ybrid means that models are based on combined structural and empirical appr oaches. The main system behavior is described by a physical model, while co mplex internal forces are modeled by black box neural networks. For a speci al class of systems this methodology is extended and a novel approach is pr esented modeling the whole system behavior by hierarchical neural networks, that fit the relation between system outputs and internal system variables . Useful information about the nonlinear system can be extracted from the r esulting models. The power of hybrid modeling is illustrated with experimen tal results and some important issues considering the practical implementat ion are deals with.