Basic principles and aims of model order reduction in compliant mechanisms

Model order reduction appears to be beneficial for the synthesis and simulation of compliant mechanisms due to computational costs. Model order reduction is an established method in many technical fields for the approximation of large-scale linear time-invariant dynamical systems described by ordinary differential equations. Based on system theory, underlying representations of the dynamical system are introduced from which the general reduced order model is derived by projection. During the last years, numerous new procedures were published and investigated appropriate to simulation, optimization and control. Singular value decomposition, condensation-based and Krylov subspace methods representing three order reduction methods are reviewed and their advantages and disadvantages are outlined in this paper. The convenience of applying model order reduction in compliant mechanisms is quoted. Moreover, the requested attributes for order reduction as a future research direction meeting the characteristics of compliant mechanisms are commented.