Laboratory for Dynamics of Machines and Structures 
Damping identification with the Morlet-wave
 J. Slavič and M. Boltežar
Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 2011, Volume 25, Issue 5, July 2011, Pages 1632-1645

download pdf   Open source   http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ymssp.2011.01.008

More research on: advanced signal processing,
Abstract
In the past decade damping-identification methods based on the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) have been shown to be some of the best methods for analyzing the damping of multi-degree-of-freedom systems. The CWT methods have proven themselves to be resistant to noise and able to identify damping at closely spaced natural frequencies. However, with the CWT-based techniques, the CWT needs to be obtained on a two-dimensional, time–frequency grid, and they are, therefore, computationally demanding. Furthermore, the CWT is susceptible to the edge effect, which causes a non-valid identification at the start and the end of the time-series.
This study introduces a new method, called the Morlet-wave method, where a finite integral similar to the CWT is used for the identification of the viscous damping. Instead of obtaining the CWT on a two-dimensional grid, the finite integral needs to be calculated at one time–frequency point, only. Then using two different integration parameters, the damping ratio can be identified. A complete mathematical background of the new, Morlet-wave, damping-identification method is given and this results in a root-finding or a closed-form solution.
The presented numerical experiments show that the new method has a similar performance to the CWT-based damping-identification methods, while the method is numerically, significantly less demanding, completely avoids the edge effect, and the procedure is straightforward to use.
Authors

Professor

Janko Slavič, PhD

  Ladisk, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana
  janko.slavic@fs.uni-lj.si
  +386 1 4771 226
jankoslavic     jankoslavic    
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Professor

Miha Boltežar, PhD

  Ladisk, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana
  miha.boltezar@fs.uni-lj.si
  +386 1 4771 608
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