Optimal bounded control of stochastically excited MDOF nonlinear viscoelastic systems

A new procedure for designing optimal bounded control of stochastically excited multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) nonlinear viscoelastic systems is proposed based on the stochastic averaging method and the stochastic maximum principle. First, the system is formulated as a quasi-integrable Hamiltonian system with viscoelastic terms and each viscoelastic term is replaced approximately by an elastically restoring force and a visco-damping force based on the randomly periodic behavior of the motion of quasi-integrable Hamiltonian system. Thus, a stochastically excited MDOF nonlinear viscoelastic system is converted to an equivalent quasi-integrable Hamiltonian system without viscoelastic terms. Then, by applying stochastic averaging, the system is further reduced to a partially averaged system of less dimension. The adjoint equation and maximum condition for the optimal control problem of the partially averaged system are derived by using the stochastic maximum principle, and the optimal bounded control force is determined from the maximum condition. Finally, the probability and statistics of the stationary response of optimally controlled system are obtained by solving the Fokker–Plank–Kolmogorov equation (FPK) associated with the fully averaged Itô equation of the controlled system. An example is worked out to illustrate the proposed procedure and its effectiveness.