Although Morison equation is often applied for simulating hydrodynamic force of marine structure, it may give poor results when non-linear behavior is severe or random wave is encountered. This leads to some modifications of Morison equation or other methods for predicting hydrodynamic force. One of them is the system identification technique. In this paper, NARMAX model theory is firstly used to identify the hydrodynamic system of heave damping plates, which are commonly installed on spar platform. Both linear and non-linear models are obtained. The comparisons between the predicted results and measured data indicate that NARMAX model can predict hydrodynamic force of a heave damping plate very well. The measured data for identification originate from forced oscillation tests, which are random records with given spectrum. The forced oscillation forms in experiment also contain simple harmonic, multi-frequency ones.