Experimental Modal Analysis

Experimental modal analysis has grown steadily in popu-larity since the advent of the digital FFT spectrum analyzer in the early 1970’s. Today, impact testing (or bump testing) has become widespread as a fast and economical means of finding the modes of vibration of a machine or structure. In this paper, we review all of the main topics associated with experimental modal analysis (or modal testing), in-cluding making FRF measurements with a FFT analyzer, modal excitation techniques, and modal parameter estima-tion from a set of FRFs (curve fitting)