A substructure method for coupling impulse response functions with finite element models via rigid-elastic joints

The complexity and size of spacecraft have brought great difficulties and challenges to system level dynamics simulation and design optimization. In order to improve the computing efficiency, dynamic substructuring method is introduced. This paper uses the impulse-based substructuring (IBS) method, an efficient approach in transient dynamic simulating, and adapts the original methods by coupling impulse response functions (IRF) with finite element models through rigid-elastic joints. The validity of these coupling ways which include rigid-only, elastic-only and rigid-elastic joints is separately demonstrated by three numerical examples. Besides, the coupling way by rigid-elastic joints is applied to the transient dynamic simulation of soft landing of the lunar lander. The results show that this method is suitable for the simulation of soft landing for lunar landers with great efficiency and precision. Furthermore, this method can be applied to the lunar lander's local structure optimization.