Design sensitivity analysis extended to perturbation treatment in problems of uncertain structural system

This paper presents an approach for extension of sensitivity methods to include the structural uncertainty with the random parameters. The formulation is based on the perturbation method. A method of direct differentiation for calculating sensitivity coefficients in regard to the governing equation, the first-order perturbed equation and the second-order perturbed equation, is derived. The numerical results are specifically noted, where the stiffness parameter and external load are treated as random variables. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.