Representation of Random Shock Via the Karhunen Loeve Expansion

Shock excitations are normally random process realizations, and most of our efforts to represent them either directly or indirectly reflect this fact. The most common indirect representation of shock sources is the shock response spectrum. It seeks to establish the damage-causing potential of random shocks in terms of responses excited in linear, single-degree-of-freedom systems. This paper shows that shock sources can be represented directly by developing the probabilistic and statistical structure that underlies the random shock source. Confidence bounds on process statistics and probabilities of specific excitation levels can be established from the model. Some numerical examples are presented.