Determination of normal modes from measured complex modes

A technique is presented for computing a set of normal modes from a set of measured complex modes. The number of elements in the modal vectors, which is equal to the number of measurements, can be larger than the number of modes under consideration. It is also shown that the practice of normal mode approximation to complex modes can lead to very large errors when the modes are too complex. A numerical example and a simulated experiment illustrate the concepts discussed and support the theory presented.