Structural Dynamics

Structural Dynamics

I specified the number of modes to be extracted in a modal analysis using the unsymmetic solver but a lower number of modes are calculated. Also aplpies to the DAMP solver. Why are less modes calculated?

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      Participant

      Both the UNSYM and DAMP eigensolvers may not calculate as many modes as requested The details on the UNSYM (and DAMP) eigensolvers can be found here: https://ansyshelp.ansys.com/account/secured?returnurl=/Views/Secured/corp/v192/ans_thry/thy_tool13.html The key point is the following: For a large number of eigenvalues, the UNSYM extraction algorithm is able to move automatically to a new shift if the first solve only finds a subset of eigensolutions. This process will be repeated until all the required eigenvalues are found, unless the algorithm fails several times to find any accurate eigenvalues. The shift is needed to get the higher frequency modes, but it will stop if it can no longer get accurate modes, as described above. It’s also worth noting that Sturm sequence checks can’t be performed for UNSYM or DAMP: https://ansyshelp.ansys.com/account/secured?returnurl=/Views/Secured/corp/v192/ans_str/Hlp_G_STR3_15.html%23ajgQxq322mcm Thus, we mention that there may be missing modes at higher frequencies – this is a bit of digression but worth noting since the user is extracting a lot of modes. There isn’t a good workaround or solution to this since it’s a limitation of the eigensolvers. I have two suggestions: If the user is doing a downstream harmonic analysis, solving with full method (rather than mode-superposition) is preferred If the user is not doing a downstream msup analysis but just wants to get the frequencies (modal analysis is last analysis type needed), then they can run multiple modal analyses with different shift points. For example, they can extract 100 modes between frequency A and frequency B, then they can extract 100 modes from frequency B to frequency C (you probably don’t want to end/begin at the exact same frequency B but have some overlap). Extracting smaller numbers of frequencies within a frequency range (beginning frequency is most important, as that is the shift point) helps.