Improving the double-exponential windowing method to identify modal frequencies and damping ratios of dynamically large structures

Abstract

Dynamically large structures can have many closely spaced modes. A particular example is an extruded aluminium panel used for building high-speed trains. Such a structure may be modelled deterministically with a large number of degrees of freedom (dofs), or statistically represented as a statistical energy analysis (SEA) system having particular SEA parameters. In both cases, experimental modal parameter identification may be required. Although there are several commercial packages which can be used for modal parameter identification, alternative methods with different strengths and/or convenience are still desirable. In this paper, the double-exponential windowing method developed by the second author is revisited and improved. Improvements are achieved by taking into account the effect of the finite time duration of Fourier transforms and making use of the real parts of driving point mobilities. The method is easy to implement and the improvements make the choice of the decay rate in the exponential window much flexible: for a very lightly damped structure, it allows to use a large positive decay rate to depress measurement noise, and for a highly damped structure, it allows to use a negative decay rate to make modes more evident or to separate overlapped modes. The usefulness of the improved method are demonstrated for a 30-bladed wheel model with known modal parameters, and for an extruded aluminium panel.