Almost sure stochastic stability of a viscoelastic double-beam system

This paper investigates the dynamic stability of a viscoelastic double-beam system under parametric excitations. It is assumed that the two beams, made from Voigt–Kelvin material, are simply supported and continuously joined by a Winkler elastic layer. Each pair of axial forces consists of a constant part and a time-dependent stochastic function. In the case of “non-white” excitations, by using the direct Liapunov method, bounds of the almost sure stability of the double-beam system as a function of retardation time, bending stiffness, stiffness modulus of the Winkler layer, variances of the stochastic forces and the intensity of the deterministic components of axial loading are obtained. Numerical calculations are performed for the Gaussian process with a zero mean, as well as a harmonic process with a random phase. When the excitations are wideband noises, almost sure stability is obtained within the concept of the Liapunov exponent. White noise and Ornstein–Uhlenbeck processes are considered as models of wideband noises.