In the previous tutorial we saw how we could compute modal properties of a system from its mass, stiffness, and damping matrices. Unfortunately, real dynamic systems do not have mass, stiffness, and damping matrices readily available. Therefore, modes of the system must be derived experimentally, generally from the time histories of the excitation force applied to the system and the responses to that excitation measured from the system.
The sub-tutorials in this section will walk through various parts of this process to demonstrate how experimental modal analysis is performed.