Nonstationary earthquake response of a sliding rigid structure (Q1108128)

The transient and nonstationary responses of a rigid structure sliding on its randomly moving foundation are studied. Stationary and nonstationary, white noise and filtered white noise models for earthquake ground acceleration are considered. The method of nonstationary equivalent linearization in conjunction with the moments of the Fokker-Planck equation is used for the response analysis. umed that there is a finite subset B of H such that \(U_ n\) has transition probabilities of the form \[ P\{U_{n+1}=(x+y,m_ 2)| U_ n=(x,m_ 1)\}=p(y,m_ 1,m_ 2) \] for \(m_ 1,m_ 2\in M\), \((x,m_ 1)\in H\setminus B\). For \((X,m_ 1)\in B\), the transition probability is more or less arbitrary. Some conditions of irreducibility, ergodicity, and boundedness of the increments are imposed on \(X_ n.\) An appendix written jointly with Szász discusses some recurrence criteria for random walks with internal states. These are based on analogies with electrical networks. The same method was used recently for more general chains by \textit{D. Griffeath} and \textit{T. Liggett} [Ann. Probab. 10, 881-895 (1982; Zbl 0498.60090)].