Dynamic response of structures with statistical uncertainties in their stiffnesses

Abstract A technique is derived to compute the instantaneous transient response statistics of an undamped linear N -degree-of-freedom structure subjected to arbitrary but deterministic forcing functions, when random uncertainties are introduced into the stiffness matrix. The uncertainties are modeled as perturbations with a Gaussian distribution. For the case of an impulsive driving function, simple bounds are derived showing the growth with time of the response uncertainty as a function of the model uncertainty.