RANDOM RESPONSES OF DISCRETIZED BEAMS AND PLATES BY THE STOCHASTIC CENTRAL DIFFERENCE METHOD WITH TIME-COORDINATE TRANSFORMATION

A technique that incorporates the stochastic central difference method and time co-ordinate transformation is presented and applied to the d etermination of time-dependent variances and covariances of responses of beam and plate structures discretized by the finite element method. A formula has been established for the evaluation of the dimensionles s time step size used in the response computation. This dimensionless step size is related to the dimensionless fundamental natural frequenc y of the discretized system. Results obtained by the technique are com pared with solutions calculated by the exact expressions presented ear lier by the first author. It is concluded that the technique gives ver y accurate results and is a very effective alternative to existing tec hniques available in the literature.