On statistical quasi-linearization

In carrying out the statistical linearization procedure to a non-linear system subjected to an external random excitation, a Gaussian probability distribution is assumed for the system response. If the random excitation is non-Gaussian, however, the procedure may lead to a large error since the response of bother the original non-linear system and the replacement linear system are not Gaussian distributed. It is found that in some cases such a system can be transformed to one under parametric excitations of Gaussian white noises. Then the quasi-linearization procedure, proposed originally for non-linear systems under both external and parametric excitations of Gaussian white noises, can be applied to these cases. In the procedure, exact statistical moments of the replacing quasi-linear system are used to calculate the linearization parameters. Since the assumption of a Gaussian probability distribution is avoided, the accuracy of the approximation method is improved. The approach is applied to non-linear systems under two types of non-Gaussian excitations: randomized sinusoidal process and polynomials of a filtered process. Numerical examples are investigated, and the calculated results show that the proposed method has higher accuracy than the conventional linearization, as compared with the results obtained from Monte Carlo simulations.