Perturbation methods in evolutionary spectral analysis for linear dynamics and equivalent statistical linearization

The analysis of large-scale structures subject to transient random loads, coherent in space and time, is a classic problem encountered in earthquake and wind engineering. The simulation-based framework is usually seen as the most convenient approach for both linear and nonlinear dynamics. However, the generation of statistically consistent samples of an excitation field remains a heavy computational task. In light of this, perturbation techniques are applied to develop and improve evolutionary spectral analysis. Advantageously performed in a standard modal basis, this evolutionary spectral analysis for linear structures requires the computation of the modal impulse response matrix. However, this matrix has no general closed-form expression in the presence of modal coupling. We propose therefore to model it by an asymptotic approximation, obtained by the inverse Fourier transform of an asymptotic expansion of the modal transfer matrix of the structure. This latter expansion considers the modal coupling as a perturbation of a main decoupled system. This strategy leads to an expansion known in a closed-form. Finally, the semi-group property allows the use of an efficient recurrence relation to approximate the modal evolutionary transfer matrix, i.e. the evolutionary extension of the transfer matrix. The asymptotic expansion-based method and the recurrence relation are then applied to nonlinear transient dynamics by using Gaussian equivalent linearization. This extension is formalized by a multiple timescales approach, allowing to consider a linearized structure, namely a time variant system, as piecewise linear time invariant depending on a statistical timescale. The proposed developments are finally illustrated on realistic civil engineering applications. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.