Dynamic Response and Reliability Analysis of Wind-Excited Structures

Abstract

This paper proposes a new procedure for simulation of random wind velocity field with only a few random variables. The procedure starts with decomposing the random wind velocity field into a product of a stochastic process and a random field, which represent the time property and spatial correlation property of the wind velocity fluctuation respectively. Then the stochastic process for wind velocity fluctuations is represented as a finite sum of deterministic time functions with corresponding uncorrelated random coefficients by an innovative orthogonal expansion technology. Similarly, the random field is expressed as a combination form with only a few random variables by the Karhunen-Loeve decomposition. It provides opportunities to use probability density evolution method (PDEM), which had been proved to be of high accuracy and efficiency, in computing the dynamic response and reliability of general linear/nonlinear structural systems. A numerical example, which deals with a MDOF frame structure subjected to wind loads, is given for the purpose of illustrating the proposed approach.