Automatic modal analysis: reality or myth?

The increasing use of modal analysis as a standard tool means that both experienced and inexperienced analysts are faced with new challenges: uncertainty about the accuracy of results, inconsistency between estimates of different operators, the tedious task of selecting obvious poles in a stabilization diagram and the time-consuming iterations required to validate a modal model. Therefore, it is no surprise that considerable research efforts are spent to overcome these difficulties. A few years ago, the PolyMAX modal parameter estimation method was introduced which makes the modal parameter estimation process much easier by better discriminating spurious from physical poles. Nevertheless, the route to automation still requires discrimination methods to distinguish physical from mathematical poles, in particular in the case of high-order and/or highly damped structures. This paper discusses an approach for automating the modal parameter estimation process and its industrial validation.