From the viewpoint of vibration control, if the amplitude of the main frequencies of the vibration response can be reduced, the vibration energy of the structure is greatly reduced. Modal parameters, including modal shapes, natural frequencies, and damping ratios, can reflect the dynamics of the structure and can be used to control the vibration. This paper integrates the idea of “forgetting factor weighting” into eigenvector recursive principal component analysis, and then proposes an operational modal analysis (OMA) method that uses eigenvector recursive PCA with a forgetting factor (ERPCAWF). The proposed method can identify the transient natural frequencies and transient modal shapes online and realtime using only nonstationary vibration response signals. The identified modal parameters are also suitable for online, real-time health monitoring and fault diagnosis. Finally, the modal identification results from a three-degree-of-freedom weakly damped linear time-varying structure shows that the ERPCAWF-based OMA method can effectively identify transient modal parameters online using only nonstationary response signals. The results also show that the ERPCAWF-based approach is faster, requires less memory space, and achieves higher identification accuracy and greater stability than autocorrelation matrix recursive PCA with a forgetting factor-based OMA.
A New Online Operational Modal Analysis Method for Vibration Control for Linear Time-Varying Structure