In a nonlinear oscillatory system, spectral submanifolds (SSMs) are the
smoothest invariant manifolds tangent to linear modal subspaces of an
equilibrium. Amplitude-frequency plots of the dynamics on SSMs provide the
classic backbone curves sought in experimental nonlinear model identification.
We develop here a methodology to compute analytically both the shape of SSMs
and their corresponding backbone curves from a data-assimilating model fitted
to experimental vibration signals. Using examples of both synthetic and real
experimental data, we demonstrate that this approach reproduces backbone curves
with high accuracy.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figure