Improved independent component analysis based modal identification of higher damping structures

• Structural identification by blind source separation.
• ICA cannot be adopted in high damping structure (with damping ratio more than 1%).
• An improved method named IDT + ICA overcomes the flaw of ICA.

Structural modal parameter identification under ambient excitation has strong engineering value and theoretical significance. As the most popular tool for solving Blind Source Separation (BSS) problems, Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is able to directly extract the time-domain modal parameters, including frequencies, damping ratios and modal shapes. ICA, however, has a fatal flaw of failing to identify structures with higher damping. To overcome the flaw above, the paper proposes a new method named “ICA + IDT”. Firstly, free vibration response of a structure is obtained from structural outputs under ambient excitation. Inverse damping transfer (IDT) is employed to turn a highly damped signal into a low damping response signal without changing of frequencies and mode shapes. Then, structural modal parameters are extracted from the low damping response signal by ICA. Finally, the identified damping ratios are adjusted to eliminate the impact of IDT. To verify the effectiveness and applicability of IDT + ICA proposed herein, two numerical simulations—mass-spring model and simply supported concrete beam—and an experiment model of three-story steel frame are built, and the analysis results reveal that presented method can identify structures with higher damping effectively.