Variability of the fatigue damage due to the randomness of a stationary vibration load

Abstract This paper investigates the variability of the fatigue damage caused by the randomness of a stationary Gaussian random loading. After reviewing some methods from the literature (e.g. Madsen et al., Low), the paper presents a Monte Carlo simulation study to compare such methods with results from time- and frequency-domain analyses. Best-fitting expressions are derived to relate the variability of the damage directly to bandwidth parameters of a PSD. Finally, the paper analyses the variability of the damage when computed from one or few time-histories. For both cases, confidence intervals are constructed to bound the expected damage; simulations confirm their correctness.