Analysis of s t r u c t u r e s

subjected to random loading

using the transfer matrix or
numerical integration
methods
J. D. Riera
CPGEC, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brasil. Currently at Institut far Mechanik, Universitdt Innsbruck, lnnsbruck, Austria

R. D. Ambrosini
Instituto de Ingenieria Civil Universidad Nacional de Tucuman, SM de Tucuman,
Argentina
(Received February 1990)

An efficient scheme is proposed for the analysis of free standing

guyed structures subjected to random wind loading, by using the
transfer matrix or numerical integration methods in the frequency
domain. Although the formulation is particularly suitable in the case
discussed, it may also be applied in connection with other methods
for determining structural response. An example is given of the
generation of the longitudinal fluctuating wind velocity component at
points located along a 50 m stretch.

Keywords: simulation, random wind loading, numerical integration,

stochastic processes

The closely related methods of transfer matrices and

direct numerical integration have been used extensively
for the analysis of free standing as well as guyed structures, and similar systems. The basic difference between
the two schemes is that in the latter, numerical integration, using for example the Runge-Kutta or the
predictor-corrector methods, is employed for generating
the field transfer matrices. When closed form solutions
are available for the field matrices, the scheme is known
as simply the 'transfer matrix method'.
A systematic procedure was proposed by Falk I and
extensively developed by Kersten 2 later. Applications
to static instability and to the consideration of secondorder effects were due to Pfliiger 3, Riera et a l 4 and
Reimundin et al 5, among others.
The determination of natural frequencies and modes
of vibration of undamped continuous beams and shafts
has been discussed in detail by Pestel and Leckie 6, who
also described the calculation of dynamic response to
harmonic excitation. Ebner and Billington 7 employed
numerical integration to study steady state vibrations of
damped Timoshenko beams. Numerous other applica0141-0296/92/030176-04
1992 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd

176

Eng. Struct. 1992, Vol. 14, No 3

tions can be found in the literature concerning straight

and curved beams, as well as arch and shell structures.
In the latter, the approach must be used in conjunction
with variable separation and eigenfunction series
expansion.
The method lends itself well to the study of slender
buildings, free standing, guyed chimney stacks, TV
towers and radio antennas, as well as for analysing
simple stayed bridge structures under wind action.
The purpose of this paper is to extend the method to
the evaluation of structural response to random wind
excitation. Prenninger and SchuEller 8 applied transfer
matrices to study the reliability of tall buildings under
wind loading, but they followed the classical approach
of determining the power spectral density functions
(PSDF) of selected response quantities from previously
calculated admittance functions. Although the basic idea
is also applicable to finite element or finite difference
representations of the structure and to other types of
stochastic loads, the approach described here is
particularly suitable in connection with transfer matrix
or numerical integration techniques.

Guyed structures subject to random wind loading: J. D. Riera and R. D. Ambrosini

Fundamental concepts
The equation of motion of any linear structural system
may be expressed in the form

O~"
O~ = A(x)17+B(x) ~a2y"+if(x,

t)

(1)

in which the coefficients of the system matrices A and

B are assumed to be continuous functions of the spatial
coordinate x. The components of the n-dimensional
vector y are known as the 'state variables' of the
problem. The external (field) loads are specified by the
vector/7(x, t). For example, in a plane, beam in bending
the system state at any location is described by a fourdimensional state vector. The beam displacement, rotation, shear force and bending moment are usually
selected in that case as 'state variables '6.
On the other hand, the state vector for an opensection, thin-walled beam with warping, contains twelve
components. The system matrices A and B for such a
beam, based on Vlasov's hypotheses but also including
the influence of shear deformations, have recently been
obtained by Ambrosini and Riera 9.
If the complex Fourier transform (with respect to
time) is applied to both sides of equation (1)

a7
3x

- [A(x) - ~2B(z)] I7+/~x, o~)

(2)

in which
oo

I7=

f
f

ei~tY(x,t) dt

(3)

ei~t~(x, t) dt

(4)

-oo

P=

Obviously, in numerical applications, the fast Fourier

transform (FFT) algorithm is used to compute the
transform (4) of the load vector if(x, t). Then, the
problem defined by equation (2), plus the necessary
boundary conditions may be solved, for any fixed value
of co, using standard numerical integration methods and
well-known techniques for transformation of the twopoint boundary-value problem into an initial-value
problem 6. Repeating the procedure for the entire set of
values of the frequency 00, for which the FFT of the load
is given, the FFT of the state vector components can be
obtained.
If desired, the inverse FFT of quantities of interest
may be calculated, in order to have those quantities
represented as functions of time.
Stationary random

loading

Wind loading is commonly idealized as a stationary,

correlated, Gaussian stochastic process. Assume now
that the spatial coordinate x denotes height above ground
level and that only one component of the load vector has
to be specified. The longitudinal component (of the
fluctuating part) of the wind velocity will be considered
as an example. It will be seen later that the procedure

may be extended without difficulty to more general

situations.
The velocity components of interest is defined by its
PSDF Sv (co), which is related to the real Re(o~) and the
imaginary Im(~0) parts of the Fourier transform of the
load (The usual assumption is.made that the fluctuating
pressure is directly proportional to the fluctuating
velocity.), by means of
Sv(60) = E {Re2(oo) + Im2(o~)}

(5)

In which E( ) denotes expected value. In addition, the

spatial correlation of the velocity (load) must be
specified, as will be discussed in the next section. At this
point it should be noted that equation (5) suggests an
attractive alternative for generating artificial wind
records for the purposes of structural design. Starting
from the fact that if the longitudinal fluctuating wind
velocity component is Gaussian, then the real and
imaginary parts of its Fourier transform will also be
Gaussian variables, it follows that, on account of equation (5)
Re(w) = N [0, 0.5Sv ]
Im(0) = N [0, 0.5Sv ]

(6)
(7)

The notation N above indicates a 'normal variable

with zero mean and standard deviation equal to 0.5Sv'.
Thus, the procedure recommended by Prenninger 1 for
the generation of single artificial wind records is being
adopted below. The idea is extremely simple: if the components of the load vector in equation (2) can be
specified, by simulation, then the FFT of all response
quantities may be obtained immediately.
The power spectrum of any desired quantity, say the
displacement at the top, or the base moment, are given
by the sum of the squared values of the real and
imaginary parts of the respective FFT. One such power
spectrum would be a crude estimator of the PSDF. To
evaluate the latter, several simulations would be needed,
in order to estimate the PSDF with confidence. However, in practical applications the variance of the
response quantity y is all that is needed. This is given by
O'y2=

Sy(oa) de0

(8)

ObviOusly, the variability of try2 is much smaller than

that of the integrand. This may be more clearly visualized by noting that, for computational purposes, the
integral in equation (8) is replaced by a finite sum over
the range of frequency of interest. Since normally a
large number of terms is taken in the FFT, say 256, the
variance of the sum, which represents the estimated
value of 02 , is much smaller than that of the individual
values of Sr(~0). Hence, very few simulations are
needed to adequately characterize the random response
of the structure. It is felt that it will rarely be possible
to justify the need for more than three simulations. Note
that in wind tunnel studies the mean square value of any
specific quantity is often measured, i.e. it is observed,
only once. At best, the experiment is repeated a few
times, say 3 to 5, practice that is compatible with the
proposed criteria.

Eng. Struct. 1992, Vol. 14, No 3

177

G u y e d structures subject to r a n d o m w i n d loading: J. D. Riera and R. D. A m b r o s i n i

Generation of wind field

30

The treatment of spatial correlation will be described in

connection with an example of an artificially generated
wind field. Note that equation (2) requires the specification of the transformed load vector in a space (x)
frequency (~) plane, schematically shown in Figure 1.
The steps for each frequency wj are as follows

2o

select the cut off frequency and the number of

points in which the interval will be divided. In
general, N > 256
(b) generate a sample from a variable with uniform
probability distribution in the interval [0, 1]
(c) transform the sample obtained in (a) to a
normally distributed variable with zero mean and
unit standard deviation X,
(d) obtain the desired components of the FFT of the
wind velocity by means of

10
0

-10

(a)

X~(O.5Sv(%))l/Z

(9)

In the example, Davenport's spectrum t~ was used. The

steps outlined in (a) to (d) lead to the FFT of independent
samples of the wind velocity. To account for the spatial
correlation, the expression proposed by Davenport 12 for
the 'correlation length' was adopted. The correlation
length Lc is defined as the area under the correlation
curve
Lc(o~) =

-20

t (seg)

30
20
lO
E
v
=" 0
-10

-20
0

10

t (seg)

if' e x p/~ )ClO~X\ dx

(10)

20
in which 12~0is the mean velocity at reference height
Zo = 10 m. Measurements of the parameter C for vertical correlation are due, among others, to Shiotani and
Iwatani t3. It should be noted that

lO

L~(o~) -

271"I21o

(11)

C~co

In the following, the spatial coordinate .will be denoted

by z, instead of x, following the usual notation in wind
engineering. Consider now the variable
] u 1 -k- a 2 u 2
x = a(a
2 + a~) 2

'" " W V

0
-10

-20

10

10

t(s~)

(12)

20
lO

"'I

O)

11

~1 ~

1i
i
i
i

i
I

Lc I
I I

I
I

-10

r---

Lc I

i
i
i

-~--

-20
~

~
I

COj_ 1

Figure I

178

cOj

Schematic representation of x-w plane

Eng. Struct. 1992, Vol. 14, No 3

COj+ 1

t (seg)
C_ON

d
Figure 2

Fluctuating part of longitudinal wind velocity component (a), ~z = O, (b) ~z = 2.50 m

Guyed structures subject to random wind loading: J. D. Riera and R. D. Ambrosini

in which u~ and u2 are independent normal r a n d o m
variables with at = 1 - ( , a 2 ---~ and ~ = z~.[L~, &z
being the distance between the points at which ut and u2
are to be simulated. It m a y be easily verified that the
normalized correlation coefficient is

p.., = 1 - ~

(13)

A linear p,.,, as given by equation (13), in view o f

the scarce and contradictory experimental evidence concerning the spatial correlation o f the fluctuating c o m p o nent o f turbulent wind, seems as g o o d an approximation
as any, and was therefore used in the example, on
account o f its simplicity. Then at each frequency ~0j, a
process Xl, is generated at the beginning o f the interval
(z = 0). A n independent process u2 is generated at
z = Lc. The ordinates o f the F F T for 0 ~ z -< Lc are
c o m p u t e d using equation (12).
Numerical values Zk/-/= 50 m, I2~0= 20 m s-~ and
CI = 5, were adopted in the example. The intensity o f
turbulence, I = 0.15, as well as the mean wind velocity
were assumed to be constant throughout the interval. In
order to allow a visualization o f the wind velocity
samples, the inverse F F T s o f the simulated transforms
were c o m p u t e d at distances Az = 0, i.e. at the beginning
o f the interval o f interest, Az = 0.05, H = 2.50 m,
Az = 4 7 . 5 0 m and Az = 50 m, i.e. at the b o u n d a r y o f
the field. F i g u r e 2 shows 10 s samples o f the generated
fluctuating components o f the wind velocity at those
heights. It m a y be seen that the records at 0 and 2.50 m
look very similar, differing in fact in the high frequency
components. The same statement is applicable to the
records at 47.50 and 50 m, while there is no
resemblance between the f o r m e r and latter samples,
which should indeed be statistically independent.

Conclusions
A procedure to e m p l o y numerical integration methods,
or alternatively the transfer matrix method, to analyse
free standing or cable stayed structures subjected to

random wind loads has been presented. The scheme

offers several advantages with regard to other alternatives: in the first place, it permits the consideration o f any
type o f (linear) viscoelastic material behaviour, as well
as any spatial distribution o f the dissipative forces.
M o r e o v e r , no restrictions need be imposed on the
character and correl]tion structure o f the applied
loading.

References
1 Falk, S. 'Biegen, Knicken und Schwingendes Mehrfeldrigen geraden
Balkens', Abhandlungen der Braun-Schweig'schen Wissenschafilichen Gesellschafl, Band VII, 1955
2 Kersten, R. 'Dos Reduktionsverfahren der Baustatic', 2. Auflage,
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1984 (1. Auflage: 1962)
3 Pfliiger, A. 'Stabilitdtsprobleme der Elastostaik', Springer-Verlag,
Berlin 1964
4 Riera, J. D., Reimundin, J. C. and Cudmani, R. O. 'An~ilisis de
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deformaciones por corte', Informe T6cnico, Inst. de Ing. Civil,
Universidad Nac. de Tucumdn, Argentina, 1971
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under wind excitation considering coupled modes and soil-structure
interaction', Probabilistic Enging. Mech., 1989, 4(1), 19-31
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secci6n abierta considerando la flexibilidad pot corte', IX Congresso
Latinoamericano e Ib6rico Sobre M6todos, computacionalespera Ingenierid, MECOM '88, C6rdoba, Argentina, Nov. 1988
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statistical properties of wind spectra', Z. angew. Math. Mech. 1988,
68(1), 334-336
II Davenport, A. G. "The spectrum of horizontal gustiness near the
ground in high winds', J. Roy Meterol. Soc. 1961, 87, 199-211
12 Davenport, A. G. 'The dependence of wind loads upon
metereological parameters" Proc. Int. Seminar Wind Effects on
Buildings and Structures. Univesityof Toronto Press, Toronto, 1968,
19-82
13 Shiotani, M. and Iwatani, Y. 'Correlation ot wind velocity in relation
to the gust loading', Proc. 3rd Conf. on Wind Effects on Buildings and
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179