Verification of Fe Models for Model Updating

This paper describes a study of FE model verification. Before undertaking a model updating procedure, it is important to determine whether the initial model can be updated or not. Two methods for model verification a convergence check and a configuration check are proposed here to address the problems of discretisation and configuration errors in FE models, respectively. The differences between the predictions from a given FE model by using different mass matrix formulations are seen to be closely related to the convergence range of the model prediction. The residuals between the experimental mode shapes and those obtained by curve-fitting the experimental mode shapes with eigenvectors predicted from the FE model are studied here. It is concluded that these residuals can reveal the existence of configuration errors in the FE model. Case studies based on theoretical models show that these two methods are efficient at distinguishing configuration errors from parameter errors and estimating discretisation errors and the compensation for them.