Stochastic Response and Reliability Analysis of Hysteretic Structures

During the last 30 years response analysis of structures under random excitation has been studied in detail. These studies are motivated by the fact that most of natures excitations, such as earthquakes, wind and wave loads exhibit randomly fluctuating characters. For safety reasons this randomness must be considered by the designers of structures like tall buildings, off-shore structures,ships etc. The response of a structure is generally uncertain due to the uncertainty of the geometrical and physical parameters determining the system, the uncertainty of the excitation and the imperfections of the adapted mathematical model from which the structural response is determined.

In general emphasis will be placed on applications of the various methods introduced rather on questions concerning the excistence and uniqueness of solutions.