Improvements in the Superelement Method of Structural Analysis for Spacecraft Applications

Finite element based structural analysis of complex structures are often performed using the concepts of superelements. Though these concepts are incorporated in commercial software packages, it is seen that there are several limitations, especially in estimating the interior responses of the superelements, which are very essential for spacecraft applications. Therefore several procedures / programs are developed for the above purposes. A few of then? are described in this paper. First a detailed insight to the dynamic analysis procedures using superelements is presented. Detailed description on output transformation matrices and their use in estimating the responses of the superelements are explained. The limitations in general purpose software packages in carrying out the superelement analysis are highlighted and procedures / programs developed to overcome these limitations are discussed. Results of several examples from spacecraft applications are presented explaining the advantages.