• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제17권3_4호
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• pp.445-466
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• 2004

In this paper, several modal identification techniques for output-only structural systems are extensively investigated. The methods considered are the power spectral method, the frequency domain decomposition method, the Ibrahim time domain method, the eigensystem realization algorithm, and the stochastic subspace identification method. Generally, the power spectral method is most widely used in practical area, however, the other methods may give better estimates particularly for the cases with closed modes and/or with large measurement noise. Example analyses were carried out on typical structural systems under three different loading cases, and the identification performances were examined throught the comparisons between the estimates by various methods.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제8권5호
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• pp.453-464
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• 1999

Safety monitoring systems of structures generally resort to detecting possible changes of dynamic system parameters. Sensitivity analysis of these dynamic system parameters may implement these techniques. Conventional structural eigenvalue problems are discussed in the scope of those systems with deterministic parameters. Large and flexible structures, such as suspension bridges, actually possess stochastic material properties and these random properties unavoidably affect the dynamic system parameters. The sensitivity matrix of structural modal parameters to basic design variables has been established in this paper. Moreover, second order statistics of natural frequencies due to the randomness of material properties have been discussed. It is concluded from numerical analysis of a modem suspension bridge that although the second order statistics of frequencies are small relatively to the change of basic design variables, such as density of mass and modulus of elasticity, the sensitivities of modal parameters to these variables at different locations change in magnitude.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제4권4호
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• pp.425-436
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• 1996

An application of the perturbation method to optimum structural design with random parameters is presented. It is formulated on the basis of the first-order stochastic finite element perturbation method. It also takes into full account the stress, displacement and eigenvalue constraints, together with the rates of change of the random variables. A method for calculating the sensitivity coefficients in regard to the governing equation and the first-order perturbed equation has been derived, by using a direct differentiation approach. A gradient-based nonlinear programming technique is used to solve the problem. The numerical results are specifically noted, where the stiffness parameter and external load are treated as random variables.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제32권1호
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• pp.71-94
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• 2009

In this paper a procedure for Monte Carlo simulation of univariate stationary stochastic processes with the aid of neural networks is presented. Neural networks operate model-free and, thus, circumvent the need of specifying a priori statistical properties of the process, as needed traditionally. This is particularly advantageous when only limited data are available. A neural network can capture the "pattern" of a short observed time series. Afterwards, it can directly generate stochastic process realizations which capture the properties of the underlying data. In the present study a simple feed-forward network with focused time-memory is utilized. The proposed procedure is demonstrated by examples of Monte Carlo simulation, by synthesis of future values of an initially short single process record.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제56권5호
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• pp.767-785
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• 2015

The stochastic finite element method is employed to obtain a stochastic dynamic model of angled beams subjected to impact loads when uncertain material properties are described by random fields. Using the perturbation technique in conjunction with a precise time integration method, a random analysis approach is developed for efficient analysis of random elastic waves. Formulas for the mean, variance and covariance of displacement, strain and stress are introduced. Statistics of displacement and stress waves is analyzed and effects of bend angle and material stochasticity on wave propagation are studied. It is found that the elastic wave correlation in the angled section is the most significant. The mean, variance and covariance of the stress wave amplitude decrease with an increase in bend angle. The standard deviation of the beam material density plays an important role in longitudinal displacement wave covariance.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제5권6호
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• pp.839-851
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• 1997

Closed-form solutions are analytically derived for stochastic properties of earthquake ground motion fields, which are conditioned by an observed time series at certain observation sites and are characterized by spectra with uncertainties. The theoretical framework presented here can estimate not only the expectations of such simulated earthquake ground motions, but also the prediction errors which offer important information for the field of engineering. Before these derivations are made, the theory of conditional random fields is summarized for convenience in this study. Furthermore, a method for stochastic interpolation of power spectra is explained.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제20권4호
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• pp.389-403
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• 2005

In the present paper it is aimed to perform the stochastic dynamic analysis of fluid and fluidstructure systems by using the Lagrangian approach. For that reason, variable-number-nodes twodimensional isoparametric fluid finite elements are programmed in Fortran language by the authors and incorporated into a general-purpose computer program for stochastic dynamic analysis of structure systems, STOCAL. Formulation of the fluid elements includes the effects of compressible wave propagation and surface sloshing motion. For numerical example a rigid fluid tank and a dam-reservoir interaction system are selected and modeled by finite element method. Results obtained from the modal analysis are compared with the results of the analytical and numerical solutions. The Pacoima Dam record S16E component recorded during the San Fernando Earthquake in 1971 is used as a ground motion. The mean of maximum values of displacements and hydrodynamic pressures are compared with the deterministic analysis results.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제59권1호
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• pp.187-207
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• 2016

Practical ambient excitations of engineering structures usually do not comply with the stationary-white-noise assumption in traditional operational modal analysis methods due to heavy traffic, wind guests, and other disturbances. In order to eliminate spurious modes induced by non-white noise inputs, the improved stochastic subspace identification based on a delay index is proposed in this paper for a representative kind of stationary non-white noise ambient excitations, which have nonzero autocorrelation values near the vertical axis. It relaxes the stationary-white-noise assumption of inputs by avoiding corresponding unqualified elements in the Hankel matrix. Details of the improved stochastic subspace identification algorithms and determination of the delay index are discussed. Numerical simulations on a four-story frame and laboratory vibration experiments on a simply supported beam have demonstrated the accuracy and reliability of the proposed method in eliminating spurious modes under non-white noise ambient excitations.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제32권1호
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• pp.95-126
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• 2009

The present contribution addresses the parallelization of advanced simulation methods for structural reliability analysis, which have recently been developed for large-scale structures with a high number of uncertain parameters. In particular, the Line Sampling method and the Subset Simulation method are considered. The proposed parallel algorithms exploit the parallelism associated with the possibility to simultaneously perform independent FE analyses. For the Line Sampling method a parallelization scheme is proposed both for the actual sampling process, and for the statistical gradient estimation method used to identify the so-called important direction of the Line Sampling scheme. Two parallelization strategies are investigated for the Subset Simulation method: the first one consists in the embarrassingly parallel advancement of distinct Markov chains; in this case the speedup is bounded by the number of chains advanced simultaneously. The second parallel Subset Simulation algorithm utilizes the concept of speculative computing. Speedup measurements in context with the FE model of a multistory building (24,000 DOFs) show the reduction of the wall-clock time to a very viable amount (<10 minutes for Line Sampling and ${\approx}$ 1 hour for Subset Simulation). The measurements, conducted on clusters of multi-core nodes, also indicate a strong sensitivity of the parallel performance to the load level of the nodes, in terms of the number of simultaneously used cores. This performance degradation is related to memory bottlenecks during the modal analysis required during each FE analysis.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제86권3호
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• pp.349-359
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• 2023

This paper presents a technique for determining the optimal number of elements in stochastic finite element analysis based on reliability analysis. Using the change-of-variable perturbation stochastic finite element approach, the probability density function of the dynamic responses of stochastic structures is explicitly determined. This method combines the perturbation stochastic finite element method with the change-of-variable technique into a united model. To further examine the relationships between the random fields, discretization of the random field parameters, such as the variance function and the scale of fluctuation, is also performed. Accordingly, the reliability index is calculated based on the explicit probability density function of responses with Gaussian or non-Gaussian random fields in any number of elements corresponding to the random field discretization. The numerical examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for a one-dimensional cantilever reinforced concrete column and a two-dimensional steel plate shear wall. The benefit of this method is that the probability density function of responses can be obtained explicitly without the use simulation techniques. Any type of random variable with any statistical distribution can be incorporated into the calculations, regardless of the restrictions imposed by the type of statistical distribution of random variables. Consequently, this method can be utilized as a suitable guideline for the efficient implementation of stochastic finite element analysis of structures, regardless of the statistical distribution of random variables.