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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Stochastic Differential Calculus

subject

description

In many cases of engineering interest it has become quite common to use stochastic processes to model loadings resulting from earthquake, turbulent winds or ocean waves. In these circumstances the structural response needs to be adequately described in a probabilistic sense, by evaluating the cumulants or the moments of any order of the response (see e.g. [1, 2]). In particular, for linear systems excited by normal input, the response process is normal too and the moments or the cumulants up to the second order fully characterize the probability density function of both input and output processes. Many practical problems involve processes which are approximately normal and the effect of the non-normality can often be regarded as negligible. This explains the popularity of second order analyses.