Operational modal analysis using SVD of power spectral density transmissibility matrices

Abstract This paper proposes the singular value decomposition of power spectrum density transmissibility matrices with different references, (PSDTM-SVD), as an identification method of natural frequencies and mode shapes of a dynamic system subjected to excitations under operational conditions. At the system poles, the rows of the proposed transmissibility matrix converge to the same ratio of amplitudes of vibration modes. As a result, the matrices are linearly dependent on the columns, and their singular values converge to zero. Singular values are used to determine the natural frequencies, and the first left singular vectors are used to estimate mode shapes. A numerical example of the finite element model of a beam subjected to colored noise excitation is analyzed to illustrate the accuracy of the proposed method. Results of the PSDTM-SVD method in the numerical example are compared with obtained using frequency domain decomposition (FDD) and power spectrum density transmissibility (PSDT). It is demonstrated that the proposed method does not depend on the excitation characteristics contrary to the FDD method that assumes white noise excitation, and further reduces the risk to identify extra non-physical poles in comparison to the PSDT method. Furthermore, a case study is performed using data from an operational vibration test of a bridge with a simply supported beam system. The real application of a full-sized bridge has shown that the proposed PSDTM-SVD method is able to identify the operational modal parameter. Operational modal parameters identified by the PSDTM-SVD in the real application agree well those identified by the FDD and PSDT methods.