A trajectory piecewise-linear approach to model order reduction and fast simulation of nonlinear circuits and micromachined devices

In this paper we present an approach to the nonlinear model reduction based on representing the nonlinear system with a piecewise-linear system and then reducing each of the pieces with a Krylov projection. However, rather than approximating the individual components as piecewise-linear and then composing hundreds of components to make a system with exponentially many different linear regions, we instead generate a small set of linearizations about the state trajectory which is the response to a 'training input'. Computational results and performance data are presented for a nonlinear circuit and a micromachined fixed-fixed beam example. These examples demonstrate that the macromodels obtained with the proposed reduction algorithm are significantly more accurate than models obtained with linear or the recently developed quadratic reduction techniques. Finally, it is shown that the proposed technique is computationally inexpensive, and that the models can be constructed 'on-the-fly', to accelerate simulation of the system response.