I have a physical system with n number of 6 degree of freedom bodies coupled by springs. So the system has 6n degrees of freedom (3 translational degrees of freedom + 3 rotational degrees of freedom for each n body). The eigenvector matrix of the system is 6n X 6n.
I want to identify the dominant degree of freedom in each eigenvector. But the issue is that since there are both translational and rotational degrees of freedom the maximum values of each column of the eigenvector cannot be used to obtain this (even after normalization). Is there any approach to do this?
One approach seen in a paper is using modal participation factors defined in this way : $$ \pi = (\Phi^{-1})^T \circ \Phi $$ $\Phi$ - eigen vector matrix
$\circ$ - element wise multiplication
I don't completely understand this, so any help in understanding the above equation or any other approach to identify the dominant degree of freedom in an eigen mode having different physical scaling is very much appreciated.