Advances in Civil Engineering and Building Materials Chang, Al Bahar & Zhao (Eds)

2013 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-64342-9

Simplified calculation method for integral of mean square value

of various nonstationary random responses
Shigeru Aoki & Azusa Fukano
Tokyo Metropolitan College of Industrial Technology, Tokyo, Japan

ABSTRACT: When the system is subjected to nonstationary excitations such as earthquake excitation, the
response of the structure is nonstationary random process. Calculation method for the mean square value of the
response of such a system is very complicated. In this paper, an approximate method for obtaining the mean
square value of the response is proposed. In this method, the mean square value of the response for stationary
random excitation is used. Integrals of the mean square value with respect to time from 0 to infinity are obtained.
Integral of the mean square value is related to total energy of the response. It is concluded that the approximate
method gives exact value of integral of the mean square value of the response.
Keywords:

Seismic Response, Random Vibration, Nonstationary Random Process, Envelop Function

INTRODUCTION

Earthquake excitation is a nonstationary excitation.

Then, the response of the structure is nonstationary
random process. Mean square value of the response
is one of the representative values which describe
the statistical characteristics of the random response
(Clough & Penzien, 1993). Mean square value of the
response is related to energy. Energy of the response
is used to evaluate absorbed energy and cumulative
damage of the structure (Soong & Dargush, 1997).
Earthquake excitation is sometimes represented by
multiplying stationary random excitation by envelop
function. It is easy to obtain the mean square value
of stationary random process, which is given as formula (Crandall and Mark, 1963). However, calculation
method for the mean square value of the nonstationary response of the system is very complicated. Then,
an approximate method was proposed for calculating the mean square value of nonstationary random
process based on that of stationary random process
(Hasselman, 1972) (Bucher, 1988).
For reduction of seismic response, some dampers
and seismic isolation systems have been developed. In
these cases, energy balance between the response and
the input is considered (Wong, 2008). Total energy
is related to integral of mean square value of the
response.
In this paper, a new method is proposed for calculating the mean square value of nonstationary random
process by using that of stationary random process.
The mean square value of the nonstationary response
is assumed to be a product of the mean square value
of stationary response and square of envelop function.

Integral of the mean square value of the nonstationary response is related to total energy of the response.
Integral of the mean square value is approximately
obtained from product of integral of square of envelop
function and the mean square value of stationary random process. For comparison, exact value of integral
of the mean square value is obtained.
As a structural model, a single-degree-of-freedom
system is used. Nonstationary white noise is used
as excitation. Integral of the mean square value is
calculated for various values of the damping ratio
and the natural period. Integral of the mean square
value calculated from approximate method is equal to
that calculated from exact method irrespective of the
damping ratio and the natural period.

2 ANALYTICAL METHOD
2.1 Analytical model and excitation
As a fundamental analytical model, a single-degreeof-freedom system shown in Figure 1 is used, where m
is mass, c is damping coefficient, k is spring constant,
x is absolute displacement of mass, y is absolute displacement of ground surface. An equation of motion
with respect to relative displacement of mass to ground
surface z(x y) is given as


where (c/2 mk) is the damping ratio, n ( k/m) is
the natural circular frequency and is derivative with

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