The goal of the paper is to describe the added value and complexities of nonlinear system identification applied to a large scale industrial test setup. The additional important insights provided by the frequency domain nonlinear approach are significant and for such systems the nonlinear system identification is important, for example to estimate the noise and non-linearities levels, which can indicate mechanical and configuration issues. It is not the goal to provide a final full-scale model, but to explore what is the applicability of the nonlinear system identification theories for a complex multi-physical non-academic test-case. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.