MATLAB: Damped harmonic motion curve fit

Question

Hey,

I have a data set in matlab, when plotted it looks like this:

My goal is to determen a damped sinusoidal equation that would fit this data set, I honestly dont even know how to start. I have included my code, but it isn't much.Any help is much appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

Try this:

D = load('Stashu Kozlowski DHM.mat');                                           % File Attached
x = D.x;
y = D.y;
y = detrend(y);                                                                 % Remove Linear Trend
yu = max(y);
yl = min(y);
yr = (yu-yl);                                                                   % Range of ‘y’
yz = y-yu+(yr/2);
zci = @(v) find(v(:).*circshift(v(:), [-1 0]) <= 0);                            % Returns Approximate Zero-Crossing Indices Of Argument Vector
zt = x(zci(y));
per = 2*mean(diff(zt));                                                         % Estimate period
ym = mean(y);                                                                   % Estimate offset
fit = @(b,x)  b(1) .* exp(b(2).*x) .* (sin(2*pi*x./b(3) + 2*pi/b(4))) + b(5);   % Objective Function to fit
fcn = @(b) norm(fit(b,x) - y);                                                  % Least-Squares cost function
[s,nmrs] = fminsearch(fcn, [yr; -10;  per;  -1;  ym])                           % Minimise Least-Squares
xp = linspace(min(x),max(x), 500);
figure
plot(x,y,'b', 'LineWidth',1.5)
hold on
plot(xp,fit(s,xp), '--r')
hold off
grid
xlabel('Time')
ylabel('Amplitude')
legend('Original Data',  'Fitted Curve')
text(0.3*max(xlim),0.7*min(ylim), sprintf('$y = %.3f\\cdot e^{%.0f\\cdot x}\\cdot sin(2\\pi\\cdot x\\cdot %.0f%.3f)$', [s(1:2); 1./s(3:4)]), 'Interpreter','latex')

The estimated parameters are:

s =
    -1.398211481931498e+00
    -6.142349926864338e+02
     2.591368008158479e-04
    -5.442228857001487e+00
    -3.075267405594925e-15

and the fit is nearly perfect: