Conditions for the existence of a complete set of real modes for a damping vibration system

In this paper, a general damping system is transformed into an equivalent undamped system according to the transformation of general coordinates for a matrix function. The necessary and sufficient conditions for the transformability are presented, which become, after supplementing another condition as suggested, the conditions for decoupling the damping matrix of a general damping vibration system. So the Caughey's condition is insufficient for determining if a damping matrix of a general system can be decoupled.