Abstract: Parameters of time-varying damping systems and nonlinear vibration systems, such as the Duffing and Van der Pol vibration systems, were identified by the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) in this study. The nonlinear vibration signal was first decomposed into free vibration and forced vibration components by the empirical mode decomposition. Subsequently, the amplitude envelope and the instantaneous frequency of the decomposed components were computed by the empirical envelop method. Damping ratios and other parameters of the nonlinear vibration systems were finally identified by using the least square method. Compared with the results from the wavelet analysis, the proposed method is proven to be more effective through numerical simulations of three typical nonlinear vibration systems and is featured by a higher level of accuracy.