Ignoring rotational DoFs in decoupling structures connected through flexotorsional joints

Substructure decoupling consists in the identification of the dynamic behaviour of a structural subsystem, starting from the dynamic behaviour of both the assembled system and the residual subsystem (the known portion of the assembled system). The degrees of freedom (DoFs) of the coupled system can be partitioned into internal DoFs (not belonging to the couplings) and coupling DoFs. In direct decoupling, a fictitious subsystem that is the negative of the residual subsystem is added to the coupled system, and appropriate compatibility and equilibrium conditions are enforced at interface DoFs. Compatibility and equilibrium can be required either at coupling DoFs only (standard interface), or at additional internal DoFs of the residual subsystem (extended interface), or at some coupling DoFs and some internal DoFs of the residual subsystem (mixed interface). In this paper, a test bench is considered made by a cantilever column with two staggered short arms coupled to a horizontal beam. This involves both flexural and torsional DoFs, on which rotational FRFs are quite difficult to measure. Using a mixed interface, rotational DoFs are neglected and substituted by internal translational DoFs. Experimental results are presented and discussed.