APPLICATIONS OF PROBABILISTIC FINITE ELEMENT METHODS IN ELASTIC/PLASTIC DYNAMICS.

The authors have recently extended probabilistic finite element methods (PFEM) to linear and nonlinear continua in both static and transient settings. In this paper, two applications of the PFEM in elastic/plastic dynamics with random material properties are studied in detail. The discretization of the random field depends on factors such as the inhomogeneity of the randomness and the extent of the spatial correlation. The necessary guidelines for the discretization are discussed in the next section. In Section 3, the choice of the number of modes necessary for a converged PFEM solution is discussed.