The importance of dynamic behaviour of vibrating systems on the response in case of non-Gaussian random excitations

Abstract Dynamic response of vibrating system subjected to non-Gaussian random loads was investigated through a set of numerical simulation on several lumped systems aimed to determine whether and in what form the dynamic behaviour of a vibrating system transfers or masks non-Gaussianity features of the input to the output response. Indeed, in several numerical and experimental activities performed on a Y-shaped specimen it was observed how the system response, both in terms of displacement or stress, changed according to an input variation (stationary and non-stationary Gaussian and non-Gaussian load time histories) and according to a change of the system frequency response function. Moreover, it was observed that even if the system was excited in its frequency range, the response remains unchanged and similar to the input in case of non-stationary and non-Gaussian load, removing preliminarily the possibility to use spectral methods for damage evaluation, going necessarily back to a more "expensive" time-domain analysis. Since the system response characteristics may change significantly according to the input excitation features and to the dynamic system parameters allowing, in some cases, the use of spectral techniques for fatigue damage evaluation also in case of non-Gaussian input loads, the aim of this paper is to understand whether and how the dynamic behaviour of a generic mechanical system transforms the non-Gaussian input excitations into a Gaussian response. To this aim several numerical displacement responses of 1-dof lumped systems characterized by different frequency response functions (resonance frequency position and damping) were analysed and investigated for different stationary and non-stationary Gaussian and non-Gaussian excitations. In such a way, it was possible to a-priori establish under what circumstances the frequency-domain approaches can be adopted to compute the fatigue damage of real mechanical systems