Stochastic Structural Stability

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STOCHASTIC STRUCTURAL STABILITYL. Graham-Brady & B. Schafer0528318 Loss of stability in structures is an area of structural behavior where we have long known the important role that randomness plays in the safety of our constructions. In design, a variety of empirical approaches to these "imperfection sensitive" structures have been employed, but these approaches lack a reasonable connection to the true physics of stability loss in structures with inherent uncertainty. This project addresses the stochastic buckling and post-buckling response of two basic building blocks for structures: beams and plates. The work will be combined in a computational and experimental effort to explore the sensitivity of a slender frame comprised of thin-walled members. This work opens up a new avenue of research on coupled instabilities, where surprisingly little is formalized in the deterministic solution, and even less in a stochastic framework. This project is the foundation for a new collaboration at Johns Hopkins University that combines expertise in stochastic modeling with that in structural stability and design. The application of stochastic mechanics to structural stability provides a means to quantify the influence of uncertainty and randomness on stability-critical structural systems. With this knowledge, society's structures can be made both safer and more efficient. This new collaboration will be leveraged to develop a new graduate course in stochastic structural stability and to provide training for 2 graduate and an undergraduate student.