Sensitivity analysis of frequency response functions with imaginary parts decoupling based on multicomplex-step perturbation

Imaginary perturbation is used in the complex step differentiation method to compute first-order derivatives, widely known as an effective approach for sensitivity analysis in structural dynamics. However, coupling of imaginary parts occurs in the damped frequency response functions when employing this method. To mitigate this coupling, a novel approach for sensitivity analysis based on multicomplex-step perturbation is proposed in this paper, for sensitivity analysis of Frequency Response Functions in structural dynamics. The structural parameters are perturbed in multicomplex domain, the dimensions of structural matrices are expanded using the Cauchy Riemann matrix representation, the equation of motion for sensitivity analysis in frequency domain is transformed to matrix operation in field of real numbers, imaginary term will not exist in the equation of motion for sensitivity analysis, the imaginary part of the frequency response function and the imaginary part of the perturbation are decoupled, the structural frequency response functions and the corresponding sensitivities are obtained from the dimension-expanded equation of motion. A truss structure and a solar wing are adopted to verify the accuracy of the proposed method. Results show that the sensitivity of FRFs can be effectively calculated using the proposed method. Compare to the finite difference method, the proposed method is not depended on the step-size selection procedure. The multi-order and mixed-order sensitivity matrices, especially Hessian matrix can also be obtained using the proposed method.