RESPONSES OF STOCHASTIC SHELL STRUCTURES TO NON-GAUSSIAN RANDOM EXCITATIONS

An approach dealing with the responses of and acoustic radiation from temporally and spatially stochastic shell structures to non-Gaussian random excitations is presented in this paper. It employs the stochastic central difference method developed earlier by the author and his associate. The emphasis of the presentation is, however, on the responses of stochastic shell structures with large spatial variations and under non-Gaussian nonstationary random excitations. The shell structures are discretized by the mixed formulation, lower order triangular shell finite elements developed by the author and his associate in 1994. As a demonstration of the relative case of use of the approach, computed results for a temporally and spatially stochastic, clamped spherical cap subjected to a central point force treated as a non-Gaussian nonstationary random excitation are included. It is concluded that a simple and relatively very efficient approach is available for analysis of responses of temporally and spatially stochastic shell structures perturbed by non-Gaussian nonstationary random excitations.