Sampling-free parametric model reduction for structured systems

Abstract: We consider the reduction of parametric families of linear dynamical systems having an affine parameter dependence that differ from one another by a low-rank variation in the state matrix. Usual approaches for parametric model reduction typically involve exploring the parameter space to isolate representative models on which to focus model reduction methodology, which are then combined in various ways in order to interpolate the response from these representative models. The initial exploration of the parameter space can be a forbiddingly expensive task. A different approach is proposed here that does not require any parameter sampling or exploration of the parameter space. Instead, we represent the system response in terms of four subsystems that are nonparametric. One may apply any one of a number of standard (nonparametric) model reduction strategies to reduce the subsystems independently, and then conjoin these reduced models with the underlying parameterized representation to obtain an overall parameterized response. Our approach has elements in common with the parameter mapping approach of Baur et al. [8], but offers greater flexibility and potentially greater control over accuracy. In particular, a data-driven variation of our approach is described that exercises this flexibility through the use of limited frequency-sampling of the underlying nonparametric models. The parametric structure of our system representation allows for a priori guarantees of system stability the resulting parametric reduced models, uniformly across all parameter values. Incorporation of system theoretic error bounds allow us to determine appropriate approximation orders for the nonparametric systems sufficient to yield uniformly high accuracy with respect to parameter variation.