Modal identification based on continuous wavelet transform and ambient excitation tests

This paper deals with the use of the continuous wavelet transform for modal identification from ambient vibration tests. The wavelet analysis of the free responses of a linear mechanical system has been used to estimate its natural frequencies, viscous damping ratios, and mode shapes, using either the modulus or the phase of the wavelet transform with “ridge” and “skeleton” notions. This technique is extended in this paper, to the response from ambient excitation tests based on the equivalent formulation between the free response and the correlation function of a linear mechanical system under stationary stochastic excitation. The main novelties involve the new formulation of continuous wavelet transform and the use of the singular value decomposition algorithm for ridges and skeleton detection under the noisy conditions of ambient vibration tests. A complete procedure for modal identification of ambient response, including these new formulations, is presented and then applied to numerical examples and experimental test to illustrate its validity.