An Iterative Approach to Viscous Damping Matrix Identification

A method has been designed to calculate the damping matrix of a structural system given only limited information about the structure. The method presented is an iterative procedure that is valid for all damping matrices in which the eigenvalues occur in com.uler conjugate pairs for small damping. Th,e results ax accurate and can be used as a good estimate men for slightly no%sy data. Existing methods are limited and provide only a rough estimate of the damping matrix. The proposed technique is intended to we experimentally obtained eigenvalues and eigenvectors as well a.3 an analytical ma,Yn matrix to solve for the damping matriz. To illustrate the procedure, an erample is presented where the exact solution is known in advance and convergence to this solution using the iteration procedure can be seen. The results are n useful tool in areas such as damage detection and diagnostics of structures.