Validation of Structural Simulations Considering Stochastic Process Variation 2006-01-0459

Structural events such as buckling, on-off impact, and rupture can result in different structural equilibrium branches. If these equilibrium branches occur with a given probability, then the resulting structural problem is a stochastic process. The variation of these stochastic processes grows with time, which complicates the validation and verification of the computational results, because the difference between two different realizations of the process can be significant. Fortunately, the variation in the response due to the stochastic process, a quantity required to know how well a single test can be correlated with the computational results, can be quantified and used in the validation. This study accordingly describes the causation of the stochastic processes, the computation of the stochastic process variation, and uses some example problems to demonstrate the methodology.