An extended stochastic response surface method for random field problems

An efficient and accurate uncertainty propagation methodology for mechanics problems with random fields is developed in this paper. This methodology is based on the stochastic response surface method (SRSM) which has been previously proposed for problems dealing with random variables only. This paper extends SRSM to problems involving random fields or random processes fields. The favorable property of SRSM lies in that the deterministic computational model can be treated as a black box, as in the case of commercial finite element codes. Numerical examples are used to highlight the features of this technique and to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. A comparison with Monte Carlo simulation shows that the proposed method can achieve numerical results close to those from Monte Carlo simulation while dramatically reducing the number of deterministic finite element runs. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10602036). The English text was polished by Yunming Chen.