Load analyzing of nonstationary load history of engineering vehicles by switching Markov chain.

Engineering vehicles are widely used under various harsh working conditions. For many components in them, service loadings they suffered are usually random and nonstationary due to their remarkable characteristic called cyclic operation. To deal with that, section method can be applied. However, this method will neglect those transition cycles caused by switching load section, which can contribute a lot to fatigue. In order to consider those transition cycles, this paper applied the model called "Switching Markov Chain of Turning Points" (SMCTP). Then the expected rain-flow matrix is compared with the overall rain-flow matrix conducted by section method. The comparison result shows that SMCTP can perform well in processing nonstationary loadings. As a result, the Switching Markov Chain method (SMC) was proved to be effective in stochastically characterizing the nonstationary switching loadings of engineering vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]