This paper revisits the traditional technology of structural dynamics with particular reference to the applications to critical structures for which structural integrity is a primary requirement. The concept of structural performance is developed with a view to emphasising the positive benefits of advanced structural dynamics capabilities, in particular in the prediction and verification of the safe working life of critical products: i.e. design and demonstration. It focusses on the two primary strands of this capability—analysis for design and test for demonstration—and explains how these tasks are hindered by uncertainties of different types—aleatoric imprecision, and epistemic incompleteness—which are incurred by the inevitable approximations and simplifications that are made in the interest of pragmatic cost-effectiveness. An approach to managing these uncertainties is proposed by exploiting the supporting roles that validation testing can offer the analysis–led design process, and that design models can provide for specification and interpretation of the test–led verification demonstration. The key to this strategic approach is to ensure that an appropriate balance and integration of analysis and test activities is achieved. The approach is illustrated with specific examples which serve to highlight what are seen as the major challenges ahead in both design and demonstration. These include (1) the need to extend advanced modelling of components to the joints which connect them in every product, (2) the growing importance of including nonlinear characteristics, and the possibility of exploiting them, and (3) the need to ensure that expensive verification tests are adequately defined and executed. Future developments are anticipated to extend test–analysis integration activities into manufacture and the post-delivery service phase of the product’s life by combining data collected for monitoring and diagnosis with the design models in order to provide advanced structural health management—the so-called digital twins concept.
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