Identification of the state equation in complex non-linear systems

Building on the basic idea behind the Restoring Force Method for the non-parametric identification of non-linear systems, a general procedure is presented for the direct identification of the state equation of complex non-linear systems. No information about the system mass is required, and only the applied excitation(s) and resulting acceleration are needed to implement the procedure. Arbitrary non-linear phenomena spanning the range from polynomial non-linearities to the noisy Duffing-van der Pol oscillator (involving product-type non-linearities and multiple excitations) or hysteretic behavior such as the Bouc-Wen model can be handled without difficulty. In the case of polynomial-type non-linearities, the approach yields virtually exact results for sufficiently rich excitations. For other types of non-linearities, the approach yields the optimum (in least-squares sense) representation in non-parametric form of the dominant interaction forces induced by the motion of the system. Several examples involving synthetic data corresponding to a variety of highly non-linear phenomena are presented to demonstrate the utility as well as the range of validity of the proposed approach.