Affiliations: State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for
Industrial Equipment, Faculty of Vehicle Engineering and Mechanics, Department
of Engineering Mechanics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116023, P.R.
China | Cardiff School of Engineering, Cardiff University,
Cardiff CF24 3AA, Wales, UK
Note: [] Corresponding author: Dr. Y. H. Zhang, State Key Laboratory of
Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Department of Engineering
Mechanics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116023, P. R. China. Tel.:
+86 411 84706337; Fax: +86 411 84708400; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: The move from conceptual design, through fabrication to observation
and measurement on the resulting physical structure is fraught with
uncertainty. This, together with the necessary simplifications inherent when
using the finite element technique, makes the development of a predictive model
for the physical structure sufficiently approximate that the use of random
structural models is often to be preferred. In this paper, the random
uncertainties of the mass, damping and stiffness matrices in a finite element
model are replaced by random matrices, and a highly efficient pseudo excitation
method for the dynamic response analysis of non-parametric probability systems
subjected to stationary random loads is developed. A numerical example shows
that the dynamic responses calculated using a conventional (mean) finite
element model may be quite different from those based on a random matrix model.
For precise fabrication, the uncertainties of models cannot be ignored and the
proposed method should be useful in the analysis of such problems.
