Abstract
This manuscript considers a symmetric positive definite inverse eigenvalue problem for linear vibrating systems described by a vector differential equation with constant coefficient matrices. The inverse problem of interest here is that of determining real symmetric, positive definite coefficient matrices assumed to represent the mass normalized velocity and position coefficient matrices, given a set of specified eigenvalues and eigenvectors. The approach presented here gives an alternative solution to a symmetric inverse vibration problem presented by Starek and Inman (1992) and extends these results to include the definiteness of the coefficient matrices. The new results give conditions which allow the construction of mass normalized damping and stiffness matrices based on given eigenvalues and eigenvectors for the case that each mode of the system is underdamped. The result provides an algorithm for determining a non-proportional damped system which will have symmetric positive definite coefficient matrices.
