Engineering Structures 291 (2023) 116449

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Engineering Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Automatic modal identification via eigensystem realization algorithm with

improved stabilization diagram technique
Wen-Hai Feng a, Chao-Yuan Wu a, Ji-Yang Fu a, *, Ching-Tai Ng b, Yun-Cheng He a, *
a
Research Center of Wind Engineering and Engineering Vibration, Guangzhou University, Guangdong, China
b
School of Civil, Environmental & Mining Engineering, The University of Adelaide, SA, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Efficient and automatic identification of modal parameters becomes increasingly important for real-time struc­
Eigensystem realization algorithm tural health monitoring (SHM) of civil structures. As spurious modes usually exist as a key problem for most
Automatic modal identification output-based identification methods, great efforts have been made to eliminate them typically via stabilization-
Stabilization diagram
diagram techniques. However, the quality of traditional stabilization diagrams depends on preset parameters
Cluster
Time-varying properties identification
whose values usually vary from one case to another, which makes the method to be less objective and low
efficient. This article proposes an improved stabilization-diagram technique, through combined usage of Monte-
Carlo sampling simulation, as well as fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering and three-stage sifting manipulations.
Selling point of this paper is automated While the Monte-Carlo simulation aims to generate more robust stable-axis, the sifting and clustering manipu­
modal identification. lations can further remove outliers and discriminate true modal results. The improved stabilization-diagram
technique is then applied to two mainstream modal identification methods, i.e., eigensystem realization algo­
rithm (ERA) and stochastic subspace identification (SSI) under the context of both a simulation study on a dy­
namic system and a field research about a super-tall building. Results through comparison demonstrate that the
improved stabilization-diagram technique can facilitate ERA and SSI to identify modal parameters automatically
and effectively at a comparably good accuracy. However, ERA outperforms SSI evidently in terms of computa­
tional efficiency (upmost 15 times faster), which is attractive for real-time SHM. Parametric analysis has been
also conducted to examine detailed performance of ERA aided by the proposed stabilization-diagram technique.
Overall, the aforementioned method can be adopted to achieve a good balance between identification effec­
tiveness and computational efficiency in an automatic working pattern, and has application prospect for real-
time SHM of civil structures.

vibration accident of the SEG Tower at Shenzhen of China in 2021,

1. Introduction
Modal parameters play a dominant role in governing the character­
istics of dynamic systems. They are also involved as crucial information
in a number of research branches, such as model design and updating
[1–2], vibration control [3–4], and damage detection [5–6]. In the field
of civil engineering, as the fast development of large scale structures (e.
g., high-rise buildings and long-span bridges) which become increas­
ingly more sensitive to ambient excitations (e.g., wind load) as well as
the inevitable degeneration of their mechanical properties during the
lifecycle, there is an urgent need for conducting real-time structural
health monitoring (SHM) [7–8], so as to detect any defective features of
the targeted object timely and adopt appropriate coping measures/
strategies as early as possible. One typical example is the wind-induced
which has attracted wide social concerns about the safety of in-service
buildings. To clarify the reason for this accident, the building was
forced to shut down for quite a long period, during which detailed SHM
measurements and other detections were conducted to identify the
modal parameters and other properties of the building and the antenna
masts atop it. These efforts especially about the modal tests provided
solid evidence for achieving the final survey report and for dealing with
the accident scientifically.
In practice, operational modal analysis (OMA) [9] is most widely
exploited to identify modal parameters of civil structures, as it does not
require additionally imposed excitation, and only needs output infor­
mation. Specific OMA modal identification techniques can be classified
into three categories. The first category is frequency domain methods,
such as enhanced frequency domain decomposition technique (EFDD)

* Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: jiyangfu@gzhu.edu.cn (J.-Y. Fu), yuncheng@gzhu.edu.cn (Y.-C. He).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2023.116449
Received 5 February 2023; Received in revised form 31 May 2023; Accepted 6 June 2023
Available online 16 June 2023
0141-0296/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
W.-H. Feng et al. Engineering Structures 291 (2023) 116449

Nomenclature fi ith natural frequency

ζi ith damping ratio
x(k) state vector Φ modal shape matrix
y(k) output vector Fk external force at the kth point
u(k) input vector xik corresponding response at point ith
A system matrix ϕiv vth modal shape of the ith point
B input matrix akv constant term
C output matrix λi modal parameter
hij (k) impulse response function hik (t) impulse response function
H(k) generalized Hankel matrix Rijk (τ) cross-correlation function
Vr extended observability matrix δ unit pulse excitation
WS extended controllability matrix JFCM objective function
P left matrix after SVD μi cluster center
Q right matrix after SVD uij membership
D eigenvalue matrix after SVD m fuzzy factor
Λ diagonal matrix fj jth natural frequency
λi eigenvalue
ψi eigenvector

[10] and fast bayesian FFT [11]. The second one is time domain
methods, and typical techniques include SSI [12–13] and NExT-ERA
[14–15]. The third category is time-frequency domain methods
[16–17]. Note that ERA and SSI of the second category have been widely
utilized in various fields [18–19], owing to their advanced mathematical
underpinnings and high capacity of dealing with closely spaced modes.
However, these methods also suffer from some drawbacks such as mode
omission and spurious modes. To address these issues, the techniques of
modal accuracy metrics [20–21] and stabilization diagram [22] have
been proposed. As examples, Wu et al. [23] proposed the doubly folded
stabilization diagram, and Zhou et al. [24] proposed the Monte Carlo-
based stabilization diagram, which effectively distinguish true modes
form the false.
Although stabilization diagram can be obtained through modal ac­
curacy metrics, the removal of false modes still requires excessive
manual intervention, which is against the development of automatic
modal identification. In this regard, researchers have developed some
methods for automatic interpretation of stabilization diagram. The main
approach can be divided into two categories. The first one involves
utilizing clustering algorithms such as hierarchical clustering [25–26],
fuzzy C-means clustering [27–29] K-means clustering [30], and peak
density clustering [31–32] to automatically interpret traditional stabi­
lization diagram, thereby achieving automatic identification of physical
modes. The second category involves automatically interpreting stabi­
lization diagram by combining neural networks such as CNN for image
recognition [33], or fitting physical modes based on the training struc­
ture response using neural networks such as DNN [34]. Both categories
notably facilitated the progress of automatic modal identification.
However, some challenge still remains in the automation process.
First, most automatic identification algorithms require pre-setting
multiple parameters and thresholds, while these values usually vary
from one case to another (e.g., the number of clusters for non-
hierarchical clustering, the threshold for hierarchical clustering, and
the parameters that need to be defined empirically in the modal iden­
tification algorithm, such as the dimensions of Hankel matrix in ERA and
time-delay parameter in SSI). The quality of the stabilization diagram
depends on the pre-adjusted parameters and thresholds, and corre­
sponding uncertainty makes the determination of key parameters
involved in some clustering algorithms to be insufficiently generaliz­
able. The suitability of automatic identification methods based on neural
networks across different structures also needs to be further improved.
Second, identification efficiency remains a challenge. Clustering inter­
pretation of traditional stabilization diagram requires the setting of a
clustering threshold or complex clustering metrics, while neural-
network based automatic identification methods need lots of sample
data for training and manual parameter tuning, which are time-
consuming and complex.
In a recent study by Zhou et al. [24], a method was proposed to
eliminate false modes using Monte-Carlo based stabilization diagram.
The proposed method is able to generate robust stable-axis. However, it
imposes significant computational burden when applied to SSI. Mean­
while, the process still involves some manual manipulations. In light of
the above conditions, this paper presents an improved stabilization-
diagram technique, through fusion of Monte-Carlo sampling simula­
tion, as well as fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering and three-stage sifting
manipulations. The improved technique is then incorporated into SSI
and ERA for realizing automatic modal identification. The improved
ERA and SSI perform comparably well in identification results, but the
former outperforms the later noticeably in terms of computational effi­
ciency. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. First, the method
proposed in this paper is presented in Section 2. The performance of the
method is then evaluated using a four-degree-of-freedom numerical
model in Section 3. In Section 4, the feasibility of the proposed in dealing
with full-scale measurements of a high-rise building is examined. Main
findings are summarized in Section 5.
2. Methodology
2.1. Eigensystem realization
2.1.1. Model in discrete‑time state space
For a system with n degrees-of-freedom, the discrete-time state-space
model can be expressed as:
{
x(k + 1) = Ax(k) + Bu(k)
(1)
y(k) = Cx(k)
where k is the discrete-time, x(k) ∈ RN×1 is the state vector, y(k) ∈ Rm×1
is the output vector, u(k) ∈ Rl×1 is the input vector, A ∈ RN×N is the
system matrix, B ∈ RN×m is the input matrix, C ∈ Rl×N is the output
matrix, N(=2n) is the system order, m is the number of input channels,
and l is the number of output channels.
The matrix of the impulse response function is defined as:
⎡
h11 (k) h12 (k) ... h1m (k)
⎤
⎢ h21 (k) h22 (k) ... h2m (k) ⎥
h(k)=def ⎢ ⎥ (2)
⎣ ... ... ... ... ⎦
hl1 (k) hl2 (k) ... hlm (k)

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where hij (k) is the impulse response function between output channel i 2.2. Natural excitation technique(NExT)
and input channel j. Combined Eq. (1) with Eq. (2), it has
For a system with n degrees-of-freedom, it is excited by an external
h(k) = CAk B(k = 0, 1, 2...) (3) force Fk(t) at the kth point, the corresponding response xik(t) at point ith
is shown below:
2.1.2. Identification of system matrices ∫
∑
2n t
The Markov parameters in Eq. (3) are used to build the generalized xik (t) = ϕiv akv eλv (t− p) Fk (p)dp (12)
Hankel matrix, which is described as: v=1 − ∞

⎡ ⎤
h(k) h(k + 1) ... h(k + s) where t is time series, ϕiv is the vth order modal shape of the ith
⎢ ... h(k + s + 1) ⎥
H(k)=def ⎢
h(k + 1) h(k + 2) ⎥ (4) measuring point, akv is a constant term that relates only to the excitation
⎣ ... ⎦
... ... ... point (kth point) and the modal order v. λi is a modal parameter.
h(k + r) h(k + r + 1) ... h(k + r + s)
When the system is excited by a unit pulse at the kth point, the im­
The parameter r and s are the observability indexes (block rows of pulse response function obtained is shown below:
the Hankel matrix) and the controllability index (block columns of the ∑
2n
Hankel matrix) respectively. hik (t) = ϕiv akv eλv t (13)
⎡ ⎤ v=1
C
⎢ CA ⎥ k Then, when the system is excited by Fk(t) at the kth point, the cross-
H(k) = ⎢ ⎥ s
⎣ ... ⎦A [ B AB ... A B ] = Vr A Ws
k
(5) correlation function between the responses of the ith point and jth point
CA r− 1
can be expressed as follows:

where Vr ∈ Rrl×N is the extended observability matrix, WS ∈ RN×ms is the Rijk (τ) = E[xik (t + τ)xjk (t)]
∫ ∫
extended controllability matrix, and N is the system order. 2n ∑
∑ 2n t t+τ
= ϕiv ϕjc akv akc eλv (t+τ− p) eλc (t− q) E[Fk (p)Fk (q)]dpdq
The ERA starts with the singular value decomposition for H(0), − ∞ − ∞
v=1 c=1
which is obtained by replacing Eq. (5).
(14)
[ ][ T ]
D1 0 Q1 Assume that Fk(t) is a white noise excitation.
T
H(0) = PDQ = [ P1 P2 ] = P1 D1 QT1 (6)
0 D2 = 0 QT2
E[Fk (p)Fk (q)] = ak δ(p − q) (15)

where, P and Q are obtained by H(0) singular value decomposition as the where δ is a unit pulse excitation, ak is a constant term associated with
decomposed left and right matrices, P1 ∈ RlN×N D1 ∈ RN×N Q1 ∈ Rsm×N are point kth only(excitation point).
the submatrices of the first N (N is the order of the system) columns of
∫
the matrices P, D and Q. 2n ∑
∑ 2n t
Rijk (τ) = ϕiv ϕjc akv akc ak eλv (t+τ− p) eλc (t− p) dp (16)
From Eq. (5) and Eq. (6), we can obtain: v=1 c=1 − ∞

Vr T = P1 D1/2 − 1 1/2 T
1 T Ws = D1 Q1 (7) Then, Eq. (16) can be simplified as follows:

where T ∈ RN×N is a non-singular matrix, T corresponds to a state-space ∑

2n
Rijk (τ) = bjv ϕiv eλv τ (17)
change, which is set equal to the identity matrix. The system matrices A v=1
and C can be obtained from:
where bjv as follows:
A = D−1 1/2 PT1 H(1)Q1 D−1 1/2 (8a)
∑
2n
1
bjv = ϕjc akv akc ak (− ) (18)
B= D−1 1/2 QT1 EsT (8b) c=1
λv + λc

It can be seen that Eq. (13) and Eq. (17) are almost the same. So the
(8c)
− 1/2
C = EsT P1 D1
cross-correlation function can replace the pulse response function.
where ETs = [I 0].
2.3. Fuzzy C-means clustering
2.1.3. Determination of modal parameters
The diagonal matrix Λ ∈ CN×N is obtained by performing an eigen­ Given a feature dataset f ={f1,…fj,…fM}, the FCM algorithm parti­
value decomposition of A, its eigenvalue isλi , its eigenvector isψ i : tions f into clusters modes of each order, respectively, by minimizing the
objective function.
A = ψ Λ ψ − 1 Aψ i = λ i ψ i (9)
K ∑
∑ M ⃦ ⃦
From Eq. (9), the natural frequency and damping ratio can be ob­ JFCM = (uij )m ⃦fj − μi ⃦2 (19)
tained as: i=1 j=1

|fs lnλi | (lnλi )R where ‖‖2 is L2 norm. fj (1⩽j⩽M) is the natural frequency of the ith order.
fi = ζ = − (10)
2π i |lnλi | m is the fuzzy factor(generally m = 2). uij is membership of fj to the
cluster whose center isμi (1⩽i⩽K).
where fs is samping frequency. || is complex modulus.
The membership value of an individual must satisfy the following
From Eq. (8) and Eq. (9), the modal shape vector can be obtained as:
conditions:
Φ = CΨϕi = Ci ψ i (11)
∑
K ∑
M
uij = 1, (1⩽j⩽M), 0< uij < M, (1⩽i⩽K) (20)
i=1 j=1

The minimization problem of Eq. (19) can be solved iteratively by

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2.4.2. Two-reference channel Monte Carlo-based stabilization diagram

The value of the ERA system order should not be less than twice the
mode of interest [24]. Therefore, the range of values of the system order
N is set as [n × 2, n × 8] in this paper. The values of row r and column s of
the Hankel matrix of the ERA are generally set empirically by the
operator. However, their values are not to be ignored for modal iden­
tification results [27], and their definition criteria can be shown as
follows:
min(r, s)⩾fs /fmin (23)

where fs is the sampling frequency. fmin is the fundamental frequency, it

can be obtained by the scale space peak algorithm [35]. To ensure all
modes of interest are identified, the proposed method sets the minimum
value of the Hankel matrix ranks as MIN(r,s) = max{max(N),min(r,s)}
and its value range is set as [MIN(r, s) × 2,MIN(r, s) × 4]. After obtaining
the above ranges, a Monte Carlo simulation is used to obtain S sets of key
input parameters, as shown in Fig. 1.
ERA is generally used in conjunction with natural excitation tech­
niques (NExT) [36]. The parameters involved in the operational analysis
of NExT need to be determined rationally (i.e. reference channel, win­
dow length, overlap and average number of times). The selection of
these parameters directly affects the accuracy of the identification re­
Fig. 1. Flowchart of the proposed method. sults. Among them, the window length of NExT should be decided ac­
cording to the frequency resolution. The above S-group key parameters
updating μi and uij . are equally divided into two parts, which are calculated using different
∑M reference channels.
(uij )m fj Based on the above S-group key parameters, multiple sets of modal
μi = ∑j=1 (21)
M
j=1 (uij )
m parameters can be obtained by NExT-ERA. Next, two-reference channel
Monte Carlo-based stabilization diagram can be obtained, with the
⃦ ⃦
∑
K ⃦fj − μ ⃦ 2 following criteria [24]:
(22)
i 2 m− 1 − 1
uij = ( (⃦ ⃦
⃦fj − μ ⃦ ) )
o=1 o 2 Natural frequency : Δf = (fi − fj )/fi ⩽1% (24a)

Specifically, first initialize the cluster center μi and calculate uij
through Eq. (22). Then, compute the objective function from Eq. (19)
and update μi by Eq. (21). This process is iterated until the JFCM is not
decreasing. Finally, the fj will be put into the cluster corresponding to
maximum membership of fj .
2.4. Automatic ERA with improved stabilization-diagram technique
The method is divided into three steps, the first step is the basic
parameter input, and the second and third steps are fully automatic
processes. The following is a detailed description of the method flow, as
shown in Fig. 1.
2.4.1. Basic input parameter
First, the number of modes in the frequency range of interest can be
approximated based on the singular value spectrum, power spectrum or
empirical defaults (through multiple numerical simulations and field
measurements trials, typically set as 6 for frequencies within 1 Hz and 10
for frequencies within 3 Hz). This parameter is not sensitive to the result
and can be set approximately.
Damping ratio : Δζ = (ζi − ζj )/ζi ⩽15% (24b)
Mode shape : 1 − MAC(ϕi , ϕj )⩽1% (24c)
where i and j denote two different structural modes. This is a criterion
for the similarity of the two modes. Each mode is compared with the
modes of other groups, and the number of modes that conforms to Eq.
(24) is used as the stable index, and the stable index greater than
0.5*S*0.3 is used as the stable pole. Where 0.5*S is because there are
two reference channels, averaged into two parts after the number of
groups in each part. 0.5*S*0.3 is greater than 0.3 times the number of
groups before it is considered a stable pole.
2.4.3. FCM clustering and three-stage sifting strategy
After removing most spurious modes by two-reference channel
Monte Carlo-based stabilization diagram, the remaining M group modal
parameters. Then, clustering with FCM can be obtained for different
order modal frequencies. The number of clusters (modal orders identi­
fied) K of the FCM can be determined automatically by binarizing the
stabilization diagram to identify the number of stable axes.

Fig. 2. Sifting effect (a) stabilization diagram (b) first stage sift (c) second stage sift.

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W.-H. Feng et al.
Fig. 3. Numerical simulation study (a) four DoFs model (b) white noise exci­
tation (c) acceleration response for the fourth floor.
The first stage of frequency sifting is shown below:
[umax f1 , ..., umax fj , ..., umax fM ]⩾0.99
where umax fj ∈ (0, 1) is the membership value of each modal frequency
to the nearest clustering center. The first stage of sifting removes fre­
quency noise poles (i.e. umax fj <0.99). Next, cluster centers with less than
10 clusters are removed. The new clustering centers and clustering
groups are then obtained by iterative clustering and sifting until the
optimal clustering group is obtained. The first stage sifting is to remove
some poles, which are relatively far away from their nearest stable axis.
The second stage of damping ratio sifting is shown in the following
equation:
Δζi = |ζi − ζm |/ζm i = 1, 2, …, LK
where ζi is the damping ratio of each order of mode after the first sifting.
ζm is the median damping ratio for each order of mode. Δζi is the error of
this modal damping ratio with respect to the median damping ratio of
the same order. After the first sifting stage, the remaining modes un­
dergo damping ratio sifting, where LK is the number of modes of the K-th
order. By determining the median damping ratio of each order as a
standard, the damping ratio noise poles (i.e. Δζi > 0.5) is removed. The
effect of the first and second stage sifting is shown in Fig. 2.
In the third stage of modal shape vector sifting, the similarity of the
modal shape vector is expressed by the following equation:
⃦ ⃦
Δϕ = ⃦ϕi − ϕj ⃦1 (27)
where ‖‖1 is L1 norm. ϕi , ϕj represent mode shape vectors for the same
order in the remaining modes after the first and second sifting. The L1
norm of each modal shape vector and other modal shape vectors of the
Fig. 4. Basic parameter selection (a) singular value spectrum (b) scale-space peak algorithm.
Engineering Structures 291 (2023) 116449
same order are calculated by order separately. Count the L1 norms less
than 0.15 in each modal shape vector as a discriminant index. When the
discrimination index greater than 0.5 times the number of remaining
modes of its order, keep the mode shape vector as optimal, otherwise
remove it.
3. Numerical simulation
To evaluate the proposed method, a four degree-of-freedom (DoFs)
numerical model was developed in Matlab, and its details are presented
in section 3.1. Section 3.2 describes how to identify modal parameters
using the proposed method and compares it to other methods for anal­
ysis. The noise resistance of the proposed method is assessed in Section
3.3 through demonstrating identification errors at different signal-to-
noise ratios. Computational efficiency strategies and advantages of the
proposed method over SSI are analyzed and presented in Section 3.4.
Finally, Section 3.5 assesses the performance of the proposed method
using a time-varying model to identify changes in structural dynamic
properties.
3.1. Numerical model
(25) To illustrate the method proposed in this paper, a four DoFs nu­
merical simulation model was built as shown in Fig. 3(a).The mass m of
each mass block is defined as 2 kg, while the stiffness coefficients k1 - k4
are set as 10 N/m and the damping coefficients c1 - c4 are set as 0.16 N⋅s/
m. The mass, stiffness and damping matrix can be adopted to model a
structure. A zero-mean white noise excitation is applied at the fourth
floor as shown in Fig. 3(a)(b). By using the newmark-β method, the ac­
celeration responses of the four floors of the model can be obtained.
Fig. 3(c) shows the response of the fourth floor. fs is set to 32 Hz, the
sampling length is 1 h and the time step is 0.03125 s. Based on the ac­
celeration responses, the modal parameters of the four DoFs model are
(26) identified using the proposed method.
3.2. Modal identification via proposed method
According to the steps of the proposed method above, the basic pa­
rameters need to be determined first. The singular value spectrum curve
obtained from the acceleration response of the structure shows that the
number of modes of interest n is set to 4 and the frequency range is 0–1
as shown in Fig. 4(a). Then the algorithm automatically obtains the
results after entering the basic parameters without human intervention.
The scale space peak algorithm can identify the peak of the data.
According to the input base parameters, the peak shown in Fig. 4(b) can
be determined, where the recognized base frequency is fmin = 0.123 Hz.
According to Eq. (23), rmin = smin = fs/fmin ≈ 260. The range of the size
for the row and column of the Hankel matrix is obtained from the one
given above as [520, 1040]. The minimum order of the system is Nmin =
2 × n = 8. The range of the system order can be obtained as [8, 32]. In
this paper, the parameters of NExT are set by default, and the
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W.-H. Feng et al. Engineering Structures 291 (2023) 116449

Fig. 5. Dependence of the difference of modal damping ratio upon NExT parameters.

Fig. 6. Stabilization diagram (a) Two-reference channel Monte Carlo-based stabilization diagram, (b) traditional stabilization diagram.

relationship between frequency domain resolution, overlap and modal
damping ratio difference is analyzed to determine the optimal param­
eters as shown in Fig. 5. The difference herein refers to the absolute
difference between the results obtained using different NExT parameters
and the theoretical value. The natural frequency is not sensitive to the
NExT parameter and is not shown here. The data used for the results are
the numerical simulation data above. The window length and the
average number of times(aNum) are calculated by the following equa­
tions, respectively:
(28a)
1
Nfft = 2nextpow2(Δn×fs)+1
(Nc − Nfft)
aNum = ceil{ } (28b)
Nfft × (1 − p)
where nextpow2(.) is the smallest power of 2 equal to or greater than the
absolute value of the data length, Δn is the frequency domain resolution,
and ceil{H}is the smallest integer greater than or equal to H. Nc is the
total number of sampling points, Nfft is the window length and p is the
overlapping.
Results demonstrate the grate impact of NExT parameter on the
identification results of damping ratio, especially for the 1st mode. The
maximum difference reaches as far as 75% in the case with an insuffi­
cient resolution in the frequency domain. It is clear such parameters
should be set reasonably. In this paper, the frequency resolution is set as
0.003 Hz for closely space modes, and the overlapping rate is set as 70%
so as to improve the SNR of each block signal.
Next, the key parameters are extracted via Monte Carlo method, and
S is determined as 60 according to the measurement of calculation ac­
curacy and efficiency. With NExT-ERA, multiple sets of modal parameter
results can be obtained, which in turn lead to two-reference channel
Monte Carlo-based stabilization diagram as shown in Fig. 6(a). From the
figure, there are four stable physical modes (in red) which account for
the first four identified modes, while the scattered points are associated
with unstable poles. The lower half of the stable axes are the results
calculated using reference channel one, and the upper half are the re­
sults calculated using reference channel two. As a comparison, Fig. 6(b)
shows the conventional stabilization diagram of NExT-ERA with a single
reference channel. As reflected, the stable axes are not distinctly clear
compared to those shown in Fig. 6(a), and there are also some stable
axes which actually correspond to spurious modes. Meanwhile, there are
many stable poles that exist beyond the stable axes. All the above fea­
tures make it difficult to obtain correct identification results via the
conventional stabilization diagram. Based on the two-reference channel
Monte Carlo-based stabilization diagram, four stable axes (i.e., K = 4)
are automatically identified using an image binarization process. Then,
the first to fourth order modal parameters of interest can be obtained by
FCM clustering with first-stage frequency sifting, as shown in Fig. 7(a).

Fig. 7. Sifting and clustering manipulations (a) results after clustering, (b) second stage sift.

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Fig.8. Mode shape vectors of the four DoFs model.

Table 1
Comparison of identification results via different methods.
Method Frequency (Hz) Damping ratio (%)
Mode Mode

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 1st 2nd 3rd 4th

Proposed method 0.123 0.356 0.545 0.668 0.280 1.012 1.432 1.635
MC-SSI 0.123 0.356 0.545 0.669 0.251 0.871 1.373 1.647
Fast Bayesian FFT 0.123 0.357 0.546 0.671 0.250 0.892 1.436 1.612
AutoSSI 0.123 0.356 0.545 0.667 0.370 0.930 1.400 1.803
AEFDD 0.124 0.356 0.540 0.667 0.263 1.008 1.805 1.978
Theoretical value 0.124 0.356 0.545 0.669 0.311 0.894 1.370 1.681

Fig. 9. Comparison of identification error via the proposed method with those via MC-SSI, Fast Bayesian FFT, AutoSSI and AEFDD.

The second stage sifting is shown in Fig. 7(b), which shows that the
damping ratios of each order are aggregated in the range of their median
error of 0.5. The modal shape vector obtained after the third stage of
sifting is shown in Fig. 8. The results show that the modal shape vectors
obtained by the proposed method are in good agreement with the
theoretical values.
The performance of the proposed method is further examined
through comparing the associated results with those via SSI with the
proposed stabilization-diagram technique (MC-SSI), Fast Bayesian FFT
[11], AutoEFDD (AEFDD) [37], AutoSSI [25], as shown in Table 1 and
Fig. 9.
spectra of input signal and noise.
The modal parameters are identified using the method proposed in
this paper, and the identification errors are shown in Fig. 10(c) and (d).
The results show that the identification error of natural frequencies is
small and does not vary much with the signal-to-noise ratio. The iden­
tification error of the damping ratio is relatively large at different signal-
to-noise ratios, and the identification error of high signal-to-noise ratios
is mostly lower, with an overall error of less than 15%. The overall error
is moderate, possibly due to the utilization of NExT which can restrain
noise effects via average operations.

3.4. Computational efficiency of proposed method

3.3. Robustness against noise
The robustness of the proposed method against noise is evaluated.
The acceleration response of the four channels obtained from the above
simulation case is contaminated with different levels of noise via the
“awgn” library function on the Matlab platform. As shown in Fig. 10 (a-
b), four conditions are considered which correspond to a signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) equal to 1, 4, 16 and 100, respectively. Here, SNR is defined
as the value of 10 × log10 (Ss/Sn), where Ss and Sn denote the power
As an automatic identification method, the computational efficiency
of the method should be considered in the application process, and this
subsection analyzes the computational efficiency of the method pro­
posed in this paper. The following results were obtained using an Intel
2.40 GHz CPUs personal computer. The 1-hour acceleration response of
subsection 3.1 is downsampled. Fifteen sampling frequencies are used
and the computation time of the proposed method is recorded sepa­
rately. The fusion of SSI in conjunction with the proposed stabilization-

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Fig. 10. Comparison of different SNRs (a) time history of channel one (b) PSD of channel one (c) frequency errors (d) damping ratio errors.

Fig. 11. Relation between sampling frequency, calculation time, and modal parameter error.

diagram technique is used for comparison with the proposed method (i.
e., NExT-ERA aided by the improved stabilization-diagram technique).
The computational efficiency of the two methods is shown in Fig. 11.
The results show that the computational efficiency of proposed method
is better than SSI. The computational efficiency of the proposed method
is about 15 times better than SSI when the data is obtained from four
channels, the duration is 1 h, and the sampling frequency is 32 Hz.
Among them, downsampling has little effect on natural frequencies. For
damping ratio, NExT-ERA has a relatively large error in identifying the
damping ratio when the downsampled sampling frequency is not a
factor of the original sampling frequency. Therefore, when using
downsampling processing, NExT-ERA should avoid the required sam­
pling frequency is not a factor of the original sampling frequency. For
modal shapes, downsampling has little effect on their identification er­
rors, which are not listed in detail here for space reasons. Overall, this
method can improve sampling efficiency through downsampling, and

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W.-H. Feng et al.
Fig. 12. Change of stiffness coefficient and damping coefficient.
the efficiency has been greatly enhanced compared to SSI.
3.5. Simulation of time-varying structural dynamic properties
For automatic identification methods, the performance for identi­
fying time-varying properties of targeted structures is very important.
Here, the numerical model with four DoFs as stated in Section 3.1 is
transformed into a model whose dynamical properties vary with time.
The variations of the stiffness coefficients k1-k4 and damping coefficients
c1-c4 for each degree of freedom are demonstrated in Fig. 12.
Based on the time-varying properties of this model, the acceleration
response can be readily computed via the newmark-β method. The data
length is set as 48 h, and the time step is 0.03125 s, i.e., fs equals to 32
Hz. During the identification process, the whole data is divided into 48
segments (with 1 h length) and the results are shown in Figs. 13-14. The
modal parameters are identified using the proposed method, MC-SSI,
Fast Bayesian FFT and AutoSSI. As AEFDD suffers from relatively large
identification error, associated results are discarded in the following
Fig. 13. Identification of time-varying natural frequencies of the four DoFs model.
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Engineering Structures 291 (2023) 116449
discussions. As reflected from the comparison results, the improved ERA
method can accurately identify the modal parameters of different
response segments of the structure. It can provide more stable results
than Fast Bayesian FFT. Although the identification accuracy is com­
parable to MC-SSI, but the proposed method outperforms MC-SSI in
terms of computational efficiency. Compared to AutoSSI, the accuracy of
the proposed method is comparable, but it is more user-friendly and
automatically oriented, as there’s no need for manual definition of some
key parameters which is required for AutoSSI.
4. Application to high-rise building
Based on the field measurements of a high-rise building during
Typhoon Maon, this section identifies the structural dynamic parameters
of this high-rise building using the method proposed in this paper and
the results are validated and compared with the results obtained using
the MC-SSI, AutoSSI and Fast Bayesian FFT method.
4.1. Field measurements of a high-rise building subjected to typhoon
As shown in Fig. 15(a), the high-rise building, 330 m, is located in
Zhuhai, a typhoon-prone area along the southeast coast of China. It is a
reinforced concrete frame core tube structure. In order to study typhoon
impact on the building, an SHM system consisting of a set of acceler­
ometers at five floors and tend pressure sensors at the 51st floor has been
developed [38–39], as shown in Fig. 15, to measure the structural
response of the building in two orthogonal directions (X: north-south
direction, Y: east-west direction) and wind-induced local pressure,
respectively.
The acceleration response of 25 h duration at the top floor of the
building during Typhoon Maon is shown in Fig. 16. The measurement
started from 16:00 on August 24 and ended at 17:00 on August 25, 2022.
W.-H. Feng et al. Engineering Structures 291 (2023) 116449

Fig. 14. Identification of time-varying damping ratios of the four DoFs model.

Fig. 15. Field measurements on building (a) building exterior (b) (c) locations of accelerometers.

4.2. Modal identification of target building
The data used consists of ten channels of five-layered acceleration
responses in two directions. The data was collected between 2:00–3:00
on August 25th, Beijing time. The fs is 32 Hz, which is then reduced to 4
Hz considering the computational efficiency of the algorithm. The X
direction on the top floor and the Y direction on the top floor were
chosen as the two reference channels. A comparison of Fig. 17(a) and (b)
shows that the proposed method is more clear and less easy for modal
omission in the stabilization diagram. Fig. 18 shows the clustering and
sifting results. The identification results of natural frequency and
damping ratio are shown in Tables 2 and 3, and the results of MC-SSI,

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W.-H. Feng et al. Engineering Structures 291 (2023) 116449

Fig. 16. Top floor acceleration response during Typhoon Maon.

Fig. 17. Stabilization diagram (a) Two-reference channel Monte Carlo-based stabilization diagram, (b) traditional stabilization diagram.

Fig. 18. Sifting and clustering manipulations (a) Results after clustering, (b) second stage sift.

Table 2 Table 3
Comparison of natural frequency (Hz) obtained via the proposed method against Comparison of damping ratio (%) obtained via the proposed method against
other methods. other methods.
Mode 1 2 3 4 5 6 Mode 1 2 3 4 5 6

Direction X Y X/Y X Y X/Y Direction X Y X/Y X Y X/Y

Proposed method 0.176 0.184 0.415 0.610 0.700 0.927 Proposed method 0.606 0.783 1.254 0.903 0.567 0.974
MC-SSI 0.176 0.184 0.415 0.610 0.701 0.927 MC-SSI 0.652 0.776 1.113 0.879 0.563 0.937
AutoSSI 0.176 0.184 0.415 0.610 0.700 0.928 AutoSSI 0.525 0.838 1.136 0.826 0.588 0.896
Fast Bayesian FFT 0.176 0.183 0.414 0.610 0.700 0.927 Fast Bayesian FFT 0.585 1.084 1.116 0.845 0.563 0.919

Fast Bayesian FFT and AutoSSI identification are used for comparison frequencies, but this is expected as normal. In general, the identification
and verification. The results of natural frequencies and damping ratios uncertainty of damping ratios is larger. The modal identification results
obtained by the four identification methods are relatively consistent. and stabilization diagram show that the proposed method can identify
The differences in damping ratios are more significant than natural the modal parameters accurately, and it can also identify the close

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W.-H. Feng et al. Engineering Structures 291 (2023) 116449

Fig. 19. Time-varying natural frequencies of the target building during Typhoon Maon.

Fig. 20. Time-varying damping ratios of the target building during Typhoon Maon.

12
W.-H. Feng et al.
modes, such as the first and second order mode.
4.3. Time-varying structural dynamic properties
To verify the performance of the proposed method in identifying
time-varying dynamic properties of high-rise buildings, 25 h’ data
divided into hourly segments from the target building during Typhoon
Maon is used and the results are shown in Figs. 19 and 20. Among them,
due to the limitation of space, only the swing modes of the structure are
shown.
The results show that the natural frequencies of the four modes of
this building during the Typhoon Maon first decrease and then increase.
There is no apparent trend of the identified damping ratio between the
first and second order mode [12]. However, there is a clear tendency for
the fourth and fifth-order damping ratios, whose values first increase
first and then decrease. Furthermore, the results of the four methods
were similar. It is verified that the proposed method is also effective for
identifying changes in the dynamic properties of the structure.
5. Conclusions
This article proposes an improved stabilization-diagram technique,
through combined usage of Monte-Carlo sampling simulation, as well as
fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering and three-stage sifting manipulations.
Used for the automation of ERA. The main conclusions obtained are as
follows.
1. The ERA using improved stabilization-diagram technique can ach­
ieve automatic modal identification. The determination of key pa­
rameters and the removal of false modes can be automatically
processed. The number of FCM clusters can be obtained by binar­
ization analysis of the improved stabilization diagram. The stabili­
zation diagram criteria and sifting thresholds are applicable to
different structures.
2. The improved stabilization-diagram technique is applied to both
ERA and SSI methods. Results through comparison demonstrate that
the accuracy of the two methods is comparable, but ERA is more
efficient.
3. The ERA using improved stabilization-diagram technique is analyzed
through simulations and field measurements, and the results are
compared with MC-SSI, AEFDD, AutoSSI and Fast Bayesian FFT,
confirming the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed method.
The identification results of several hours of continuous monitoring
data in numerical simulations and field measurements show that the
proposed method is also effective for the identification of changes in
structural dynamic characteristics.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Wen-Hai Feng: Investigation, Visualization, Data curation, Writing
– original draft. Chao-Yuan Wu: Formal analysis, Software. Ji-Yang Fu:
Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – re­
view & editing. Ching-Tai Ng: Writing – review & editing. Yun-Cheng
He: Conceptualization, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Writing –
review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
13
Engineering Structures 291 (2023) 116449
Acknowledgment
The research has been supported by National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant No.: 51925802 and 52178465), Guangdong
Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (Grant No:
2023B1515020117) the Ministry of Education, China - 111 Project
(Grant No: D21021) and Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology
Project (Grant No: 202201020577).
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