ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURES WITH STOCHASTIC INTERFACES IN THE MEDIUM-FREQUENCY RANGE

Abstract

This paper proposes efficient techniques to obtain effective quantities when dealing with complex structures (including stochastic parameters, such as interface parameters) in medium-frequency vibrations. The first ingredient is the use of a dedicated approach — the Variational Theory of Complex Rays (VTCR) — to solve the medium-frequency problem. The VTCR, which uses two-scale shape functions verifying the dynamic equation and the constitutive relation, can be viewed as a means of expressing the power balance at the different interfaces between substructures. The second ingredient is the use of the Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE) to calculate the random response. Since the only uncertain parameters are those which appear in the interface equations (which, in this application, are the complex connection stiffness parameters), this approach leads to very low computation costs.