Mean-square stability of linear stochastic dynamical systems under parametric wide-band excitations

A new simplified condition is developed for determining the exponential meansquare stability margins of linear stochastic dynamical systems. It is well-known that under parametric wide-band noise disturbances, the governing equations of motion of such a system can be approximated by linear Itô stochastic differential equations (SDE). A necessary and sufficient condition for exponential mean square stability of the resulting ltô SDE is that the real parts of all the eigenvalues of the matrix describing the system of second-order moments are negative. Equivalently, the Routh-Hurwitz procedure provides conditions for stability in the form of several inequalities. In this study, it is shown that a necessary condition for the system configuration to correspond to a point on the stability boundary is that the determinant of the matrix describing the system of secondorder moments be zero. This condition is a single algebraic expression allowing for the straightforward calculation of all candidate stability boundaries. In addition, the topological properties of the stability domain are presented and shown to be useful in identifying stability boundaries and stability domains from the developed single stability boundary condition. This simplified condition provides significant advantages in the analytical and numerical estimation of the stability border and stability region of dynamical systems. The usefulness and superiority of the new condition is demonstrated by applications to example dynamical systems, including a long-span bridge model subjected to turbulent wind.