Composites are extensively used in various fields such as civil, aerospace, naval due to their high specific stiffness and strength. These properties are adversely affected due to damage. For damage detection, vibration-based methods are generally used which use modal parameters, i.e. modal frequencies, mode shapes and modal damping ratios. These modal parameters depend on the physical properties of the system, i.e. mass, stiffness and damping. Among these properties, damping is the most sensitive to damage. Therefore, the occurrence of damage should be sensed through changes in damping. Further, in order to localize the damage, a support model for damping is needed to spatially isolate the origin of the changes. Unfortunately, damping depends on numerous known and unknown physical phenomena that makes it difficult to model or estimate. In this study, first variation of modal damping ratios with damage in a composite column has been shown. Then, a new model of damping, called mode specific damping, is proposed. The performance has been checked through numerical simulations and compared with the Rayleigh model of damping.