Utilizing Computational Probabilistic Methods to Derive Shock Specifications in a Nondeterministic Environment

One of the key elements of the Stochastic Finite Element Method, namely the polynomial chaos expansion, has been utilized in a nonlinear shock and vibration application. As a result, the computed response was expressed as a random process, which is an approximation to the true solution process, and can be thought of as a generalization to solutions given as statistics only. This approximation to the response process was then used to derive an analytically-based design specification for component shock response that guarantees a balanced level of marginal reliability. Hence, this analytically-based reference SRS might lead to an improvement over the somewhat ad hoc test-based reference in the sense that it will not exhibit regions of conservativeness. nor lead to overtesting of the design