AbstractThis work considers model reduction of geometrically nonlinear finite element (FE) model of a plate structure developed in a commercial FE package. The structure is first divided into smaller substructures. Since there is normally no access to the nonlinear stiffness tensors in FE packages, a non‐intrusive method is used in this paper to reduce the order of each substructure separately. In order to generate the nonlinear reduced order model (NLROM), the reduced substructures are assembled using the coupling procedure of the Component Mode Synthesis (CMS) method. As a linear basis, truncated free and fixed interface modes are used here to check the efficiency of the developed NLROM based on them. A plate structure subjected to large deflections is considered in this study to implement the substructuring method. For the sake of validation, Nonlinear Normal Modes (NNMs) are employed to check the convergence of NLROMs in a broadband frequency range. (© 2017 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)