Highly accurate and stable algorithms for the static and dynamic analyses of independently modeled substructures

The need for assembling independent finite element substructure solutions arises in several engineering and scientific problems including the design and analysis of complex structural systems, component mode synthesis, global/local analysis, adaptive refinement, and parallel processing. In this paper, we discuss the solution of such problems via a two-field hybrid method where the substructures are joined with independently defined Lagrange multipliers, and present a Rayleigh-Ritz based smoothing procedure for improving the accuracy of the computed coupled solution in the presence of various substructure heterogeneities. We consider both conforming and non-conforming substructure meshes, and demonstrate the benefits of the proposed smoothing procedure with several examples from static and dynamics structural mechanics problems.