Identification of Mass, Damping, and Stiffness Matrices of Mechanical Systems

Abstract

A procedure is presented to calculate the mass, damping, and stiffness matrices of mechanical systems from measured input/output data. It works on the basis of the Instrumental Variable Method which is well suited for the estimation of models from data with superimposed measurement noise. Noise is present in many practical cases. The theory of the method is described with regard to vibrating systems. The first application is the estimation of the matrices of a simulated system where the noise level is varied. The results show the expected properties: less sensitivity to noise compared to the Least Squares Method. Furthermore, the procedure is applied to a real system.