No label defined (Q4955142)

The author investigates the stability problem related to a practically very important and interesting subject of the so-called smart structures. These structures allow by control to damp, for example, undesired oscillations or increase the stability of an equilibrium. In the present paper beam-like structures are considered where electrorheological fluid-filled laminates are incorporated which may exert stresses in the extensional direction for varying an electric field. For an axially loaded simply supported beam under a compressive dynamic load, which is given by a constant part and a variable part according to a wide-band Gaussian process, the author investigates the problem of stochastic stability of the trivial beam configuration. By means of a proper Lyapunov-function a modal stability analysis is performed, providing sufficient conditions for uniform stochastic stability in dependence on the magnitude of applied electric field.