SPECTRAL TECHNIQUES FOR STOCHASTIC FINITE-ELEMENTS

A formulation for the stochastic finite element method is presented wh ich is a. natural extension of the deterministic finite element method . Discretization of the random dimension is achieved via tno spectral expansions. One of them is used to represent the coefficients of the d ifferential equation which model the random material properties, the o ther is used to represent the random solution process. The method reli es on viewing the random aspect of the problem as an added dimension, and on treating random variables and processes as functions defined ov er that dimension. The versatility of the method is demonstrated by di scussing, as well, some non-traditional problems of stochastic mechani cs.