Simulation of Highly Skewed Non-Gaussian Stochastic Processes

Abstract

In this paper, a simulation methodology is proposed to generate sample functions of a stationary, non-Gaussian stochastic process with prescribed spectral density function and prescribed marginal probability distribution. The proposed methodology is a modified version of the Yamazaki and Shinozuka iterative algorithm that has certain difficulties matching the prescribed marginal probability distribution. Although these difficulties are usually sufficiently small when simulating non-Gaussian stochastic processes with slightly skewed marginal probability distributions, they become more pronounced for highly skewed probability distributions (especially at the tails of such distributions). Two major modifications are introduced in the original Yamazaki and Shinozuka iterative algorithm to ensure a practically perfect match of the prescribed marginal probability distribution regardless of the skewness of the distribution considered. First, since the underlying “Gaussian” stochastic process from which the desired non-Gaussian process is obtained as a translation process becomes non-Gaussian after the first iteration, the empirical (non-Gaussian) marginal probability distribution of the underlying stochastic process is calculated at each iteration. This empirical non-Gaussian distribution is then used instead of the Gaussian to perform the nonlinear mapping of the underlying stochastic process to the desired non-Gaussian process. This modification ensures that at the end of the iterative scheme every generated non-Gaussian sample function will have the exact prescribed non-Gaussian marginal probability distribution. Second, before the start of the iterative scheme, a procedure named “spectral preconditioning” is carried out to check the compatibility between the prescribed spectral density function and prescribed marginal probability distribution. If these two quantities are found to be incompatible, then the spectral density function can be slightly modified to make it compatible with the prescribed marginal probability distribution. Finally, numerical examples (including a stochastic process with a highly skewed marginal probability distribution) are provided to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed algorithm.