Operational modal analysis of structures by stochastic subspace identification with a delay index

Practical ambient excitations of engineering structures usually do not comply with the stationary-white-noise assumption in traditional operational modal analysis methods due to heavy traffic, wind guests, and other disturbances. In order to eliminate spurious modes induced by non-white noise inputs, the improved stochastic subspace identification based on a delay index is proposed in this paper for a representative kind of stationary non-white noise ambient excitations, which have nonzero autocorrelation values near the vertical axis. It relaxes the stationary-white-noise assumption of inputs by avoiding corresponding unqualified elements in the Hankel matrix. Details of the improved stochastic subspace identification algorithms and determination of the delay index are discussed. Numerical simulations on a four-story frame and laboratory vibration experiments on a simply supported beam have demonstrated the accuracy and reliability of the proposed method in eliminating spurious modes under non-white noise ambient excitations.