Prediction of Modal Parameters of Linear Time-Varying Systems

Many engineering structures, such as cranes, traffic-excited bridges, flexible mechanisms and robotic devices exhibit characteristics that vary with time and are referred to as time-varying or nonstationary. In particular, linear time-varying (LTV) systems have been often dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Many concepts and analytic methods of linear time-invariant (LTI) systems cannot be applied to LTV systems, as for example the conventional definition of modal parameters. In fact, LTV systems violate one of the assumptions of the conventional modal analysis, which is stationarity