ABSTRACT
One is interested in the maxima of the curve which can be positive or negative. For a fatigue analysis, it would of course be necessary to also count the minima. One can acknowledge that the average number of minima per unit time of a Gaussian random signal is equal to the average number the maxima per unit time, the distributions of the minima and maxima being symmetrical. The chapter considers the amplitudes of two successive maxima of a wide-band process as independent random variables. For high frequency vibrations, the response of the structure can have many excursions above the threshold with a relatively small average time between two excursions. For low frequency vibrations, having the same probability density p as for the preceding high frequencies, there would be fewer excursions above the threshold, but longer, with the excursions being more spaced.
