Depending on the application, friction in mechanical systems can be a desirable or an undesirable thing. In order to optimally utilize or compensate for the frictional effect in the system, characterization of the frictional behavior is a crucial task. Unfortunately, friction force exhibits strong (hysteretic) nonlinear relationship with sliding velocity, displacement and time, which makes the characterization to become a difficult task to fulfill. The classical Coulomb friction has been widely used, especially in the field of control engineering to compensate for the static force in a system. However, despite its simplicity, the effectiveness of the Coulomb model in capturing the frictional behavior of friction in the presliding regime is very low.This paper deals with the derivation of equivalent modal parameters, namely the stiffness and damping elements, to represent the hysteresis friction element on mechanical systems. The analysis is carried out using the skeleton technique, which employs the instantaneous amplitude and frequency of the excitation input and the response of the system. Subsequently, the dynamic analysis is performed on the equivalent system and the result is compared to that of the original system. The results show good agreement between the equivalent system and the original system for wide range of excitation.