Steven Naylor

ArvinMeritor Inc., Warton Technical Center,

Hillock Lane, Warton,
Preston, Lancashire, PR4 1TP UK
e-mail: steven.naylor@arvinmeritor.com

Michael F. Platten
e-mail: michael.platten@man.ac.uk

Jan R. Wright
e-mail: jan.wright@man.ac.uk

Jonathan E. Cooper
e-mail: jonathan.cooper@man.ac.uk
School of Engineering,
University of Manchester,
Oxford Road,
Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

Identification of Multi-Degree of
Freedom Systems With
Nonproportional Damping Using
the Resonant Decay Method
This paper describes an extension of the force appropriation approach which permits the
identification of the modal mass, damping and stiffness matrices of nonproportionally
damped systems using multiple exciters. Appropriated excitation bursts are applied to the
system at each natural frequency, followed by a regression analysis in modal space. The
approach is illustrated on a simulated model of a plate with discrete dampers positioned
to introduce significant damping nonproportionality. The influence of out-of-band flexible
and rigid body modes, imperfect appropriation, measurement noise and impure mode
shapes is considered. The method is shown to provide adequate estimates of the modal
damping matrix. DOI: 10.1115/1.1687395

Introduction

The identification of accurate dynamic models for systems is of

considerable importance in predicting the response to any input
signal. While the estimation of modal mass, undamped natural
frequency and mode shapes is well established for most linear
systems, the general difficulty in modelling energy dissipation has
led to much less reliable results for the damping.
An assumption often made in compiling the damping information is that the system conforms to the special case of proportional
damping, i.e. the damping matrix may be expressed as a function
of the mass and stiffness matrices, such that the modal transformation yields a diagonal modal damping matrix. However, when
the system contains localized discrete sources of damping, as is
often the case in practice, the damping will be nonproportional
and a proportional damping assumption may lead to significant
errors in the predicted dynamic response.
Assuming a nonproportional modal damping matrix yields two
advantages over an assumed proportional modal damping matrix.
Firstly, off-diagonal terms may couple modes when their natural
frequencies are closely spaced 1, and close to the excitation
frequency 2, and such terms may affect the response calculations. Secondly, a full representation of the modal damping matrix
could possibly enable parameters of a physical damping model to
be evaluated, thereby revealing the distribution of damping
present in the system.
Much work has concentrated on the identification of physical
damping matrices 3 8 are but a few. It would then be possible
to obtain the modal damping matrix from the physical damping
matrix using a normal mode transformation. However, in general,
the physical damping matrix may be very large for real systems,
rendering the identification difficult. The above references tend to
concentrate on fairly low order lumped parameter models.
However, less attention has been paid to the identification of
modal damping matrices, particularly for nonproportionally
damped systems. The majority of methods found in the literature
are based on extracting damping information from the complex
modes of the system. For a linear system, mode complexity occurs
as a direct result of nonproportional damping.
For instance, Hasselman 910 proposed a perturbation
method for identifying a full modal damping matrix based on
Contributed by the Technical Committee on Vibration and Sound for publication
in the JOURNAL OF VIBRATION AND ACOUSTICS. Manuscript received April 2002;
Revised August 2003. Associate Editor: M. I. Friswell.

298 Vol. 126, APRIL 2004

experimentally derived complex modes. The underlying assumption is that the complex mode shapes represent only a small perturbation from the normal mode shapes. Therefore, the method
becomes less accurate as the amount of nonproportional damping
increases and is suitable only for systems with weak nonproportional damping. Another limitation is that knowledge of the physical mass matrix is required. For continuous systems this information is not generally available.
On experimental application of the method, it was found that
the identified modal damping matrix was in error since it was not
positive definite. Vold et al. 11 showed that the probable source
of this was errors in the phase of the experimentally derived complex modes which obscured the damping information. Other complex mode approaches 1214 also suffer from the same problem. Experimentally derived complex mode shapes are usually the
result of a phase separation analysis, where there is no clear measure of the quality of complex modes.
On the other hand, phase resonance analysis, or force appropriation 15 identifies the normal modes of the system, where the
quality of the identified mode shapes can be quantatively assessed
and errors reduced. Force appropriation involves applying a particular monophase pattern of forces to a system at one of its natural frequencies, so leading to a response solely in the normal mode
shape of interest by satisfying the phase resonance criterion. Here,
the quality of the normal modes can be assessed, and so errors can
be reduced. Rades 16 proposed a method of estimating a nonproportional modal damping matrix based on Phase Resonance
testing. The method uses the complex energy transmitted to the
system during force appropriation. In fact, soft tuned modes a
predicted dynamic response of the tuned undamped normal mode
may be used in the method, so eliminating the need for physically
tuning the modes so called hard tuning. It was reported
16 that small errors in locating the undamped natural frequency
produced large errors in the values of the off-diagonal terms of the
modal damping matrix. The method of Rades was analyzed in
17 where it was shown that use of an imperfect force vector
could lead to bias in the estimated off-diagonal terms of the modal
damping matrix.
In this paper, a method based on Phase Resonance testing 18
20 for identifying elements of the modal matrices of nonproportionally damped systems is presented. Given the Frequency
Response Functions FRFs derived from a modal test, the appropriated force vectors and natural frequencies allow each normal
mode to be excited in isolation using a short burst of sinusoidal

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excitation. Once the excitation ceases, the free decay of the system will include a response from any modes coupled by damping
forces to the mode being excited. These modal responses, together
with the modal force input, form the basis of a least squares fit to
obtain an approximate non-proportional modal damping matrix.
This so-called Resonant Decay Method RDM has been applied to several simulated dynamic systems with nonproportional
damping distributions in previous papers 18 19 where encouraging results were obtained. In this paper, the method is demonstrated on a simulated model of a plate with discrete dampers
positioned so as to introduce non-proportional damping. Also, the
effect of out of band flexible and rigid body modes, imperfect
appropriation, measurement noise and impure mode shapes is
assessed.

Theory

2.1 Force Appropriation. Force Appropriation involves the

analysis of the Frequency Response Function FRF matrix in
order to obtain a set of multiple exciter force patterns and undamped natural frequencies so that the normal modes of the system may be excited in isolation. The phase resonance condition is
sought such that the displacement or acceleration responses are
monophase, and in quadrature with the excitation. The Modified
Multivariate Mode Indicator Function method MMIF 15 was
used for this work. In this method, an eigenvalue problem is formulated, where the eigenvalues drop to zero at the undamped
natural frequencies and the corresponding eigenvectors yield the
appropriated force vectors. The tuning of the mode allows measurement of the undamped normal real modes of the system,
even for a non-proportionally damped system. Such an approach
is different to Phase Separation techniques, which attempt to
curve fit the FRF matrix in order to obtain the damped complex
modes of the system.
It should be noted that for proportionally damped systems, each
mode of interest may, in principle, be excited by the appropriated
force pattern at any frequency. This is because the appropriated
force vector excites the mode of interest but, in essence, introduces no modal force into any other modal equation. The system
then behaves as a single degree of freedom. However, for a nonproportionally damped system, the appropriated force vector is
specifically aimed at counteracting any modal damping coupling
forces that are likely to excite other modes. In this case, a normal
mode may be excited only at its undamped natural frequency. At
any other excitation frequency, other modes will also be excited
wherever modal damping coupling forces are present.
In the RDM approach, the idea of a burst appropriation is
utilized. This involves removing the appropriated forcing function
when the system has reached the steady state condition where a
normal mode is excited. This allows the system to decay to rest
within the time window of analysis and to show up modes
coupled by damping forces.
2.2 Identification of Nonproportionally Damped Systems.
Consider the equations of motion expressed in modal space
M p C p K p q

(1)

where M , C and K are the (NN) modal mass, damping

and stiffness matrices respectively, q is the (N1) modal force
vector, p is the (N1) modal displacement vector, and N is the
number of degrees of freedom. Differentiation with respect to
time is represented by the usual overdot convention. The modal
mass and stiffness matrices are diagonal.
In the general case, where the nonproportional modal damping
matrix is fully populated, each mode would be coupled to every
other mode due to the off-diagonal damping terms. Solving a potentially large system of simultaneous equations could prove to be
impractical if broadband excitation were to be used. However,
when the system is subjected to a burst appropriation at a given
natural frequency then, once the excitation stops, a decaying reJournal of Vibration and Acoustics

sponse occurs that includes responses in a subset of modes

coupled by significant off-diagonal damping terms. Thus, the fully
populated modal damping matrix will consist of important offdiagonal terms, plus others which can be neglected in the identification process since their coupling contribution to the dynamic
response is negligible. It is assumed that the modal matrix is
known from a Phase Separation analysis, or from a normal mode
excitation, and thus the modal forces, q , can be derived for a
given physical excitation force pattern using

q T f

(2)

where is the modal matrix and f is the physical force vector.

Consider the burst appropriation of a mode, i, which results
theoretically in a pure response in mode i i.e. a normal mode
response during steady state, and a response in, say, mode j ( j
i) that occurs during the decay due to damping coupling forces
which cease to be suppressed once the appropriated forcing function is removed. Equation 1 can be written for mode i, at a
particular instant in time, as
M ii p i t C ii p i t C i j p j t K ii p i t q i t
This equation can be rewritten as

p i t p i t p j t p i t

M ii
C ii
Cij
K ii

q i t

(3)

(4)

Equation 4 can then be expanded to include a number, n, of time

points over the burst period as

p i 1

p i 1

p j 1

p i1

p i 2

p i 2

p j 2

p i2

p i n

p i n

p j n

p in

M ii
C ii
Cij
K ii

q i1

q i2

]
q in

(5)

where the additional subscript refers to the time sample.

Note that if the natural frequencies were assumed known at this
stage from the force appropriation process, then because of the
relationship between the modal mass and stiffness terms, Eq. 5
could be re-written in terms of only three unknowns. Alternatively, a modal mass estimate from a different method could be
imposed. However, the formulation used in this paper leaves the
modal stiffness and hence natural frequency to be identified consistently with the other parameters in a single operation, given that
any small nonlinear effects present could influence the estimated
frequency.
Equation 5 is in the form
A i x i b i

(6)

and can thus be solved in a least squares sense 21 for the unknown parameter vector, x i , typically using a Singular Value
Decomposition approach. The solution yields the diagonal modal
mass, stiffness and diagonal/off-diagonal modal damping terms
corresponding to the ith row of the modal matrices. If couplings
to other modes are also present, then the process may be extended,
simply by adding further damping coupling terms into Eq. 3 and
Eq. 5, until a goodness of fit criterion is satisfied.
The process described above seeks to identify the crosscoupling terms from a combination of the steady state and decay
data. It would be possible to solve for the cross coupling terms for
mode i, using just the steady state part of the data. However, this
relies on perfect appropriation, which is unrealistic. By including
the decay, an indicator of coupling is provided and also a response
in other modes is included.
It should be noted that in practice only the physical accelerations and forces are usually measured and Eq. 5 will therefore
require integration of the physical acceleration data to obtain the
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physical velocity and displacement prior to transformation to

modal space. If the integration is performed in the frequency domain rather than the time domain, the burst nature of the forcing
function will ensure a leakage free Fourier Transformation, provided the response has decayed sufficiently, and integration drift
will therefore be minimized. The physical force and response data
then need to be transformed to modal space using the modal matrix, prior to performing the least squares curve fit.
It is possible to take advantage of reciprocity in the formulation
of the solution for a series of modes. Consider next the appropriation of an adjacent mode, j, being coupled to modes i and k
where i jk. The modal equation for mode j, at a particular
instant in time, is
M j j p j t C ji p i t C j j p j t C jk p k t K j j p j t q j t

(7)

and if the modal damping matrix is symmetric i.e. the system

obeys the principle of reciprocity, then C i j C ji , and Eq. 7
may be rewritten as
M j j p j t C j j p j t C jk p k t K j j p j t q j t C i j p i t

(8)

where C i j is known from the solution of Eq. 5. Equation 8 may

be formulated in a similar way to that used earlier, so as to permit
a solution of the modal parameters.
It is clear that the process may be repeated on a mode-by-mode
basis to identify the modal matrices row by row. The principle of
reciprocity may be used in order to solve for the upper triangular
section of the modal damping matrix but any error in the identification of off-diagonal damping terms in the early modes will
ultimately be carried forward to the other modes. For this reason it
has been decided to solve for the upper and lower triangular parts
of the modal damping matrix independently by avoiding the subtraction of reciprocal terms shown in Eq. 8. The symmetry of the
resulting modal damping matrix may then be used as an indication
of reciprocity and hence, for a linear system, the accuracy of the
estimation. However, if a nonsymmetric solution is obtained, this
is not necessarily because of non-linearity; it could be due to noise
etc.
If the entire identification of all the modes was carried out in a
single step, a more consistent estimate might be obtained; however, the reason that the mode-by-mode approach is used here is
that it allows the number of damping cross coupling terms used
for each mode to be minimized.
In principle, Eq. 5 could also be written in physical coordinates and physical parameters could be identified, but this has
its limitations. Providing excitation at one co-ordinate and measuring the response at other co-ordinates would provide the data
for the first solution of Eq. 5. However, the estimation of the
remaining physical equations of motion would not be possible
since the right hand side of these equations would be zero, unless
a physical force were to be applied at every co-ordinate, which is
not a practical approach. This problem is overcome 7 if the
system displays symmetry in its physical damping matrix. The
right hand side of Eq. 8, expressed in physical co-ordinates,
would then consist of known symmetric damping forces but
would depend on the accurate estimation of the earlier parameters.
Expressing Eq. 5 in modal co-ordinates avoids such problems
since q i is a modal force and will always be non-zero for the
period of normal mode excitation, thereby avoiding the necessity
for the modal damping matrix to display symmetry. For large
systems with perhaps hundreds of measurement stations, the solution of the equations in modal space involves far fewer unknown parameters than the equivalent model in physical space.

3 Simulations Based on a Plate Model With Nonproportional Damping

In this section, the robustness of the RDM is tested further by
the introduction of the following types of measurement errors:
measurement noise, mode shape errors, inclusion of flexible and
300 Vol. 126, APRIL 2004

Fig. 1 Plate model dimensions and measurement positions

rigid body modes outside of the bandwidth of interest, and imperfect force appropriation. Each of these sources of error, likely to
be manifest when applying the method to a real system, is simulated in turn. The effects of these imperfections on the identification are discussed.
3.1 Plate Model. A Finite Element FE dynamic model of
a freely suspended plate was used throughout the following simulations. The aluminum plate had dimensions of 0.80.48
0.012 m and included 10 flexible and 6 rigid body modes of
vibration, although only the first 5 flexible modes were included
in most of the cases. The natural frequencies for these modes are
48.6, 66.4, 130.4, 171.5 and 192.7 Hz. A proportional damping
distribution of 0.5% critical damping was assumed for each mode.
Additionally, nonproportional damping was introduced in the
form of two viscous dampers damping coefficient 450 Nsm1 )
linking the plate to earth. The dampers were positioned at opposite
corners of the plate. A schematic diagram of the plate arrangement
can be seen in Fig. 1.
In all the estimations performed, the modal mass and stiffness
matrices were identified accurately so the focus will be on the
damping matrix results. The exact modal damping matrix for the
first 5 flexible modes of the simulated system is shown in Table 1
below and indicates that modes 1, 2 and 5 are coupled and so are
modes 3 and 4, the couplings dictated by the symmetry or asymmetry of the mode shapes.
Excitation was provided at two positions, corresponding to the
damper positions at opposite corners numbered 4 and 21 in Fig. 1.
This choice allowed the forces to be applied in line with the
dampers, thus enabling their coupling effect to be counteracted
directly.
FRFs were calculated in the range 0250 Hz using 1024 spectral lines for the MMIF calculation. The burst appropriation time
responses were obtained by transforming the input to the frequency domain, multiplying by the FRF, and transforming the
result back to the time domain. The FRFs used for the response
calculation were generated with the same frequency resolution in
the range 02000 Hz using 8192 spectral lines; this satisfied a
minimum of 16 time points per cycle for all of the modes, so
providing a visually clear response. Each of the excitation time
signals was chosen to have a 50% burst, including 25% ramp up

Table 1 Exact modal damping matrix for the first 5 flexible

modes of the system
52.07
24.28
0
0
6.59

24.28
11.67
0
0
3.10

0
0
5.36
4.45
0

0
0
4.45
4.19
0

6.59
3.10
0
0
0.98

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Fig. 2 Modified MMIF eigenvalues for two exciters and non-proportional damping Case A

and 5% ramp down. These ramps were given a half period cosine
envelope in order to avoid severe transients, as will be seen later
in the burst time histories.
3.2 Summary of Test Cases. The RDM was applied to the
nonproportionally damped plate model with only the first 5 flexible modes, for a total of 6 different cases. Strictly speaking, the
no experimental error case should correspond to using as many
exciters as there are modes in the model. This would result in
perfectly pure normal modes. However, the purpose of force appropriation is to determine the undamped natural frequencies and
appropriated force pattern that will isolate, as near as possible, the
normal modes of a system with the given number of exciters
available. Thus, force appropriation allows the number of exciters
to be less than the total number of modes while still achieving
high quality normal modes. This is a more realistic case. For this
reason, the case of using 2 exciters will be taken as the datum
Case A for comparison with other test cases, each representing a
different source of experimental error. The errors associated with
using 2 exciters positioned at the damper positions are sufficiently
small so as not to obscure the effects of the other sources of error.
The sources of error considered for application of the RDM
were as follows. Case A: Datum 2 Exciters, Case B: Out of Band
Flexible Modes, Case C: Out of Band Rigid Body Modes, Case D:
Force Appropriation Errors, Case E: Measurement Noise, and finally Case F: Mode Shape Impurities.
It should be noted that in all cases shown, the natural frequencies are estimated accurately, even if small errors occur on the
modal mass and stiffness terms.

3.3 Case A Results: Datum 2 Exciters and No Other Error Sources

Force Appropriation Results. The calculated FRFs were used
in a Modified MMIF analysis to yield the eigenvalues in Fig. 2,
giving the undamped natural frequencies 48.6, 66.4, 130.4, 171.5
and 192.7 Hz and appropriated force vectors. The primary smallest magnitude eigenvalue can clearly be seen to drop close to
zero for all five modes, indicating that good appropriation can be
achieved.
Modal Forces and Responses. Figure 3 shows the modal
forces for the burst appropriation of mode 2. The modal forces
and responses are zero for modes 3 and 4. Because damping coupling is present between modes 1, 2 and 5, some modal force is
applied to modes 1 and 5 in order to appropriate mode 2. These
forces counteract the inter-modal damping coupling forces during
the steady state phase of the burst. The modal velocity responses
due to the burst appropriation of mode 2 can also be seen in Fig.
3. The steady state response is an almost pure response in mode 2,
confirming a successful force appropriation. During the ramp up
there is a response in mode 1 but this dies away as the steady state
develops. During the decay following the burst, mode 1 can be
seen to be responding significantly, indicating that there is strong
damping coupling between modes 1 and 2. There is no visible
response in mode 5 during the decay, indicating that although the
C 25 coupling term exists in the modal damping matrix, it only has
a small effect due to the relatively large frequency separation between these modes.

Fig. 3 Modal forces and responses for the burst appropriation of mode 2 Case Ano error

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Fig. 4 Modal forces and responses for the burst appropriation of mode 3 Case Ano error

When mode 3 is excited by a burst appropriation Fig. 4 it can

be seen that modes 3 and 4 are coupled less obviously than modes
1,2 and 5 in Fig. 3 and there is no modal force or response in
modes 1, 2 and 5. The behavior of these responses however is
similar to that for the excitation of mode 2.
Figure 5 shows the modal forces for the burst appropriation of
mode 5, with modal forces present in modes 1 and 2 to counteract
coupling forces. The modal velocity responses show a steady state
response dominated by mode 5. There is no noticeable response in
any other mode during the decay, again suggesting that the effective coupling to modes 1 and 2 is small.
It should be noted that the relative amplitudes of the modal
responses depend on both the physical response of the system and
on the relative scaling of the mode shapes used in the transformation between physical and modal space. In this study the mode
shapes were normalized to unity maximum displacement and, for
this particular plate model, the contribution of each normalized
mode to the general system response is of the same order of magnitude. This means that visual inspection of the burst modal responses, combined with knowledge of the exact modal damping
matrix, gives a good indication of the coupling terms which
should be included in the curve fit see below. For more complex
structures under non-ideal measurement conditions these assumptions may not hold. In that case a more suitable approach may be
to include in the curve fit damping coupling terms to all modes in
the vicinity of the mode of interest. These terms may then be
ranked in order of their contribution to the response and the least
significant term discarded until a desired goodness-of-fit is
achieved.

Estimation of Modal Matrices. The modal responses suggest

fairly strong nonproportional damping coupling between modes 1
and 2, with both of these modes effectively uncoupled from mode
5. There is also evidence for moderate coupling between modes 3
and 4. In fitting the modal time histories, the symmetry of the
modal damping matrix was ignored i.e. each row of the modal
matrices was identified independently and three variations of
coupling were considered:
Case A-1: all true coupling terms included
Case A-2: as for Case A-1, but with coupling to mode 5
omitted
Case A-3: no coupling included, i.e. diagonal modal damping matrix
In the following results, the estimated modal damping ratio is
used to compare the accuracy of the different assumed damping
configurations. This can be found from a complex mode analysis
of the estimated modal matrices.
For Case A-1, where all relevant damping coupling terms are
included in the fit, a modal damping matrix which is identical to
the exact modal damping matrix Table 1 is identified. The modal
damping ratios and modal mass and stiffness matrices are also
identified exactly.
The weak coupling of modes 1 and 2 to mode 5 suggests that
these terms may be neglected in the least squares fit and Case A-2
considers the effect of this assumption. Table 2 shows the estimated modal damping matrix, which when compared to Table 1
shows good agreement for all but the mode 5 coupling terms. The
damping ratios for modes 1, 2 and 5 are found with 0.0, 1.8 and
3.8% error respectively. The estimated modal mass and stiffness

Fig. 5 Modal forces and responses for the burst appropriation of mode 5 Case Ano error

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Table 2 Identified modal damping matrix with mode 5 coupling terms omitted
52.07
24.02
0
0
0

24.58
11.68
0
0
0

0
0
5.36
4.45
0

0
0
4.45
4.19
0

0
0
0
0
1.00

values are identified more accurately maximum error 0.1% than

the modal damping matrix, and this is the case throughout the
simulations.
Since the coupling between modes 1 and 2 has been seen to be
strong, then neglecting such coupling terms in the least squares fit
is expected to cause large errors. The effect of omitting coupling
between modes 3 and 4 is not expected to be as severe. For Case
A-3, the estimated diagonal of the modal damping matrix is
52.07, 11.70, 5.33, 4.22, 1.00, which when compared to the
exact matrix in Table 1 shows good agreement for diagonal elements However, the absence of off-diagonal terms produces large
errors in the modal damping ratios percentage errors of 15.9%
and 60.4% for mode 1 and 2 respectively. It is clear therefore
that, while some insignificant damping coupling terms may be
neglected, the assumption that all coupling terms may be neglected Case A-3 leads to unacceptable errors in this case. The
maximum error on the modal mass and stiffness terms is 0.7%.
3.4 Case B Results: Out-of-Band Flexible Modes. A real
system will have modes outside of the frequency range of interest
and these will affect the identified modal model. The effect of
these out-of-band modes was considered in this case but will
obviously depend upon factors such as frequency separation and
damping. A further five flexible modes were included in the
model, having natural frequencies of 266.61, 270.61, 363.94,
463.67 and 496.81 Hz.
The modal forces and responses are used, as before, in a modeby-mode least squares fit to obtain the coefficients of the modal
mass, damping and stiffness matrices for the first five modes with
no assumption of reciprocity. A modal matrix which includes only
the first five modes is used in the modal transformations but the
residual effects of the other modes are present in the FRF and
therefore in the response data. All damping coupling terms between modes 1, 2 and 5 and modes 3 and 4 are included in the
identification to show the effect that the out-of-band modes have
on the estimation of off-diagonal modal damping terms. Table 3
shows the estimated modal damping matrix. The errors on the
diagonal terms happen to be zero and those for the coupling terms
between modes 1 and 2 and modes 3 and 4 are small, but the
coupling terms corresponding to mode 5 are in much greater error,
typically over 100% with one term being of the wrong sign. The
modal mass and stiffness terms are identified within 0.04%.
The errors in the coupling terms for the fifth mode are largest
because it is affected by the presence of the out-of-band modes
more than the lower frequency modes in the model, due to the
reduced frequency separation. The out-of-band modes affect the
accuracy of the force appropriation and also the modal transformation. Also, the modal responses in the burst appropriation corresponding to the coupling terms involving mode 5 are very small
and therefore more sensitive to error. A practical way of dealing

Table 3 Identified modal damping matrix with out-of-band flexible modes

52.07
24.27
0
0
3.39

24.26
11.67
0
0
10.76

0
0
5.36
4.34
0

Journal of Vibration and Acoustics

0
0
4.54
4.19
0

13.99
6.26
0
0
0.98

Table 4 Identified modal damping matrix with out-of-band

rigid body modes
51.91
25.01
0
0
8.79

26.52
11.65
0
0
0.87

0
0
5.33
4.39
0

0
0
4.02
4.18
0

27.55
9.19
0
0
0.99

with these issues is simply to include in the analysis any modes

just above the frequency range of interest which may be inducing
these errors.
3.5 Case C Results: Out-of-Band Rigid Body Modes. In
the case where a system is suspended to give free-free boundary
conditions, the suspension system will allow rigid body motion.
There are 6 rigid body modes corresponding to translation and
rotation about a 3-dimensional Cartesian axis system. The frequencies of the rigid body modes are a function of the stiffness of
the suspension system and will ideally be well below the frequencies of the flexible modes so as to have a minimal effect.
The purpose of this case was to investigate the effect that rigid
body modes have on the results of the RDM, again with only the
first 5 flexible modes used in the modal transformation. It is difficult to quantify the effect since it will be a function of the proximity in frequency of the rigid body and flexible modes of vibration. As a general rule of thumb, rigid body modes are
considered to have a small effect on the flexible mode results if
the natural frequency of the highest rigid body mode is less than
1020% of the natural frequency of the first flexible mode of
vibration.
The mode shapes and modal masses for the rigid body modes
were obtained directly from the FE model of the plate. Since only
out-of-plane motion was considered in the plate model, only the
three rigid body modes corresponding to heave, pitch and roll
were considered, with arbitrary frequencies of 4, 8 and 12 Hz
respectively the highest rigid body mode having a natural frequency approximately 25% of the natural frequency of mode 1 at
48.6Hz. Table 4 shows the identified modal damping matrix
when the rigid body modes were included in the system response
but not used in the subsequent modal transformations and curve
fit.
The diagonal damping terms are found with good accuracy, as
are the coupling terms between modes 1 and 2 and modes 3 and 4.
However, the off-diagonal damping terms corresponding to mode
5 are more in error but not as severely as for the higher frequency
out-of-band modes Case B. Again, the modal response of mode
5 due to the burst appropriation of modes 1 and 2 is small, and so
is prone to error. Also, the very low frequency of the rigid body
modes means that their contribution is amplified in the integrations performed to estimate velocity and displacement. The modal
mass and stiffness values are identified with errors in the range
0.4 4.7% because the rigid body modes are not included in the
fitted model.
3.6 Case D Results: Errors in Force Appropriation.
There are a number of ways in which errors in the force appropriation may be introduced, but here an error of 5% was arbitrarily
added to the natural frequencies identified from the MMIF to influence the effectiveness of the appropriation of each mode. The
modal responses in Fig. 6 show a departure from the datum case
in that the steady state response is not purely in the appropriated
mode but responses of other modes are also present, implying as
expected that the system is not responding in the normal mode
condition. However, the least squares fit to the data still reveals an
accurate model mass, stiffness and damping provided that all the
modes associated with the response of interest are included. On
the other hand, when all coupling terms are omitted from the fit,
the modal damping matrix exhibits severe errors, with two diagAPRIL 2004, Vol. 126 303

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Fig. 6 Modal forces and responses for the burst appropriation of mode 1 Case
Dappropriation error

onal terms identified with a negative sign. This occurs because the
steady state response includes other modes not accounted for in
the fit.

ratios of the estimated model all have a small error (1%). The
error on the modal mass and stiffness terms has a maximum value
of 0.9%.

3.7 Case E Results: Measurement Noise. All physical

measurements made on a real test are subject to unwanted disturbances superimposed on the desired signals that tend to obscure
their information content. Because the RDM is based upon data
obtained at the resonance condition, the signal to noise ratio will
be larger than that from a broadband random excitation test,
though if force drop out occurs, it will increase noise on the
force signals at resonance.
For this case, uncorrelated broadband white noise signals with
zero mean and 1% or 5% rms amplitude were added to the noisefree acceleration signals prior to the identification. If noise is suspected to be a problem in practice, one approach is to average the
data from several nominally identical burst appropriations using a
trigger at the start of each burst to synchronise the signals. Each
level of noise was considered with both unaveraged and averaged
25 times data. Note that the unaveraged case was performed for
only one noise sample and so is not a statistically general result.
However, the averaged cases used independent noise signals for
each sample and so will demonstrate how well the RDM is able to
deal with random noise.

5% NoiseUnaveraged. Table 7 shows the estimated modal

damping matrix. The direct terms are found with very small error
and the off-diagonal terms near to the diagonal are found with a
relatively small error of between 0.5% and 6.3%. The coupling
terms for mode 5 have a much greater error, terms C 15 and C 51
both having the incorrect sign. The error on the modal mass and
stiffness terms ranges from 1376%. Clearly, the method is highly
sensitive for this unaveraged case.

1% NoiseUnaveraged. Table 5 shows the estimated modal

damping matrix. Apart from the off-diagonal terms for the coupling of mode 5, all modal damping terms are found accurately
(1% error; the coupling terms for mode 5 are significantly in
error, with term C 15 having the incorrect sign. The errors in the
damping ratio are small for modes 1 and 2 (1%), moderate for
modes 3 and 4 (5%) and significant for mode 5 (15%). The
error on the modal mass and stiffness terms increases from 111%
as the mode number increases.

Table 6 Identified modal damping matrix with 1% noise

averaged

1% NoiseAveraged. Table 6 shows the estimated modal

damping matrix. These results are far more accurate than for the
unaveraged case, even for the mode 5 coupling terms, with the
sensitive term C 15 now having an error of only 3%. The damping

Table 5 Identified modal damping matrix with 1% noise

unaveraged
51.92
24.11
0
0
0.53

24.51
11.65
0
0
7.90

304 Vol. 126, APRIL 2004

0
0
5.35
4.46
0

0
0
4.47
4.19
0

0.48
2.17
0
0
0.99

5% NoiseAveraged. Table 8 shows the estimated modal

damping matrix. The errors are negligible, apart from the mode 5
coupling terms that are still significantly in error, though these
have been reduced by averaging. The error on the modal mass and
stiffness terms increases from 0.911% as the mode number
increases.
The errors on the estimated damping ratios are between 1.2% to
6.5% for the first four modes, and 16.2% for mode 5.
It is clear that averaging the noisy data reduces the effect of the

51.93
24.18
0
0
8.12

24.20
11.65
0
0
1.84

0
0
5.35
4.44
0

0
0
4.45
4.19
0

6.38
2.87
0
0
0.99

Table 7 Identified modal damping matrix with 5% noise

unaveraged
51.90
24.16
0
0
1.15

24.10
11.65
0
0
9.07

0
0
5.35
4.50
0

0
0
4.73
4.19
0

17.55
1.38
0
0
0.99

Table 8 Identified modal damping matrix with 5% noise25

averages
51.92
24.11
0
0
1.88

24.61
11.65
0
0
6.82

0
0
5.35
4.47
0

0
0
4.45
4.19
0

2.19
2.09
0
0
0.99

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Fig. 7 Modal forces and responses for the burst appropriation of mode 2 Case Fmode shape
error

noise and hence allows more accurate estimates of the modal

model to be made. By examining the error in the estimated damping ratio against the number of averages, it has been found that
about 10 averages are sufficient for errors to be acceptable at the
5% noise level.
Note that errors due to noise may be additionally reduced by
applying a bandpass filter prior to integration so as to reduce the
amplitude of any noise outside the relatively narrow frequency
range of the burst.

Table 9 Identified modal damping matrix with corrupted mode

shapes

3.8 Case F Results: Mode Shape Impurities. A fundamental principle of the RDM is that the system is excited such that the
steady state response is essentially an isolated normal mode. The
physical forces and responses are converted to modal co-ordinates
using the estimated normal mode shapes, obtained from a soft
or hard tune or from a phase separation analysis. In practice,
these normal mode shapes will not be perfectly pure but will,
especially in the presence of nonproportional damping, be corrupted by other modes if the force appropriation is imperfect, e.g.
insufficient exciters are used or exciters are not optimally placed.
Thus, if another mode is excited during the tuning process, a
combination of mode shapes will be measured. It is this effect that
is the subject of this section.
Adding a small amount of one mode to another will corrupt the
modal matrix used in the conversion of physical data to modal
data. Since the system is nonproportionally damped such that
modes 1 and 2 are strongly coupled, mode 1 was corrupted with
part of mode 2 and vice versa. The same principle was applied to
the coupled modes 3 and 4.
A contribution of 5% of the normal mode shape of mode 2 was
added to the normal mode shape of mode 1, and vice versa for
mode 2, i.e.

1. This leaking of modal information is due to the polluted

nature of the modal matrix used to convert from physical to modal
space.
Table 9 shows the estimated modal damping matrix. For modes
1 and 2, it can be seen that the errors for the diagonal and offdiagonal terms are significant and of the same order. The resulting
estimated damping ratios are in error by 14.3% and 11.1% for
modes 1 and 2 respectively. The errors on the modal mass and
stiffness terms were 1 and 10% for modes 1 and 2 respectively.
Errors in mode shape mean that the underlying basis functions
of the model are not normal modes and therefore that the modal
mass and stiffness matrices are not strictly diagonal. Including
mass and stiffness coupling terms in the fit would overcome this
problem but defeat part of the object of using a modal representation unless a re-orthogonalization was performed to transform
the model back to uncoupled form.

1 corr 1 2
2 corr 2 1

(9)

where represents the proportion of mode shape corruption, being

0.05 in this case. It should be noted that mode shape corruption is
dependent on the choice of mode shape scaling used in the model
and so it is not correct to read the above as a universal 5% mode
shape corruption. Nevertheless, this case is included purely
to demonstrate the effect of an arbitrary amount of mode shape
corruption.
Figure 7 shows the modal forces and velocity responses for the
burst appropriation of mode 2. The modal forces are similar to
those in case A. However, the modal responses show a steady
state response not only in the appropriated mode, but also in mode
Journal of Vibration and Acoustics

57.33
27.37
0
0
6.75

31.04
14.32
0
0
3.43

0
0
5.36
4.45
0

0
0
4.45
4.19
0

10.32
3.30
0
0
0.99

Conclusions

This paper has presented the Resonant Decay Method RDM

as a multi-exciter approach to the identification of nonproportionally damped systems on a mode-by-mode basis, using an extension of the force appropriation method. The method has been
demonstrated and its robustness investigated using a simulated
nonproportionally damped plate model. A number of different imperfections were considered, namely the presence of out of band
flexible and rigid body modes, force appropriation errors, measurement noise and mode shape impurities. On the whole the
method performed very well and yielded an acceptably accurate
modal damping matrix. Because of the significant frequency separation between these modes, the damping coupling effect was
small and so the parameters were more sensitive to errors in the
estimation process. In all cases, the estimated modal mass and
stiffness values were identified with only small errors.

Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the support of Airbus and EPSRC in
this work.
APRIL 2004, Vol. 126 305

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Nomenclature
C modal damping matrix
C ii direct modal damping coefficient for mode i
(Nsm1 )
C i j modal damping coupling coefficient between modes i
and j (Nsm1 )
K modal stiffness matrix
K ii modal stiffness of mode i (Nm1 )
M modal mass matrix
M ii modal mass of mode i kg
N number of degrees of freedom
n number of sample points
p modal displacement vector
p modal velocity vector
p modal acceleration vector
p i t modal displacement of mode i at sample point t m
p i t modal velocity of mode i at sample point t (ms1 )
p i t modal acceleration of mode i at sample point t
(ms2 )
q modal force vector
q i t modal force of mode i at sample point t N
modal matrix
i mode shape of mode i
proportion of mode shape corruption

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