SPECIAL ISSUE - A STATE-OF-THE-ART REPORT ON COMPUTATIONAL STOCHASTICMECHANICS - PREFACE

This state-of-the-art report assesses the current state of development of computational procedures as utilized in stochastic mechanics. The theoretical developments and aspects of practical applications are dis cussed in this report, which is structured in four sections. The first section is concerned with the latest developments in Monte Carlo simu lation (MCS)-including parallel processing and various types of varian ce reduction techniques. In the second section, various possibilities for representing stochastic processes and random fields (including dis crete and conditional representations) and wavelets are reviewed. The third section is concerned with various methods for prediction of the response of structural systems under stochastic excitation, e.g. by us ing the FEM method to solve the Fokker-Planck equation (FPE), path int egral method, moment closure schemes, maximum entropy considerations, etc. This section also includes a brief subsection on computational as pects of stochastic stability. Tbe final section is concerned with the treatment of stochastic uncertainties of system properties, such as m aterial and geometric variation, by applying stochastic finite element methods (SFEMs). All sections include statements on the current limit ations and also of the future potential of the discussed procedures. ( C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.