Taking the Guangzhou New TV Tower (GNTVT) under construction as a test bed

a detailed introduction of a ambient vibration test conducted on it under normal wind excitation is given. Two different modal analysis methods

namely

frequency domain based method and time domain based method are used to identify the modal parameters of the tower. The first ten modal parameters

namely

modal frequencies

mode shapes and damping ratios

have been identified successfully from both methods

and they are compared with those from finite element model of SAP2000. It is shown that several low modes agree well with the analytical ones

but large errors are observed in the higher modes. This shows that modal parameters from this test can be used to update the finite element of the tower

such that a better 〖JP3〗baseline model of the tower can be obtained for future health monitoring and damage detection for the tower.