Model Reduction

Model Reduction

Due to highly developed software and computer power technical products and processes may be simulated in very detail nowadays. However, developers typically want more: variants have to be checked, quickly evaluated, and optimized or the interaction of structure, fluid, and electronic components have to be investigated. The key technology in this environment is parametric model reduction: the original objects, e.g. large finite element models of a car body or non-linear differential-algebraic equations describing an electrical power supply network, are converted to parametric reduced state space models. These can be evaluated much quicker as the original models and, due to the uniform structure, be coupled, even if the original objects were modelled by different simulators.

The new parametric approach developed at the Fraunhofer ITWM solves two classical problems of model reduction:

• It is no longer necessary to start a new reduction, if design parameters change. Rather, a few pro-calculated reduced models are interpolated, which usually takes only fractions of a second.
• Non-linearities can finally be treated by using operating points as parameters.

The concept for dealing with new applications consists of implementing new interfaces to our universal model reduction toolbox (MRT). Up to now, there are available interfaces to ANSYS (multi-physics FE) and PSAT (electric power transport). In the preceding years projects from very different domains have been realized: power and gas networks, active noise and vibration control in vehicles, real-time simulation of low frequency sound fields in indoor acoustics, optimization of a subwoofer, and confidential industrial projects in the area of thermal deformation.