The damping evaluation of floating offshore systems is based on the viscous effects that are not considered in numerical models using the potential theory. Usually, different techniques for different systems are used to evaluate these hydrodynamic coefficients. The total damping is separated by potential and viscous damping, the first one is evaluated numerically and the second through experiments at reduced scale model. Common techniques considering linear motion equations cannot be applied to all degrees of freedom. Some methods were compared for results of decay test, such as: exponential and quadratic fit. Fourier transform (FT) spectral analysis and Hilbert Huang transform (HHT) can be used to evaluate the signal natural frequency and with HHT this can be done during the time domain. Also, analysis through the Random Decrement Technique (RDT) is presented to demonstrate the damping evaluation for irregular waves. The method to obtain external damping was presented for the different techniques in an ITTC semi-submersible model. The linear method is not sufficient to predict the damping coefficient for all the cases, because in most of them, the viscous damping was better represented by a quadratic fit. The HHT showed to be a good alternative to evaluate damping in non-linear systems.Copyright © 2010 by ASME