Effects of uncertainty in system parameters and impulse loading characteristics on the response of single degree of freedom (SDOF) systems are studied. The uncertain system and loading parameters are represented by truncated generalized polynomial (gPC) expansions. The nonsampling stochastic simulation procedure based on the gPC expansion technique is used for dynamic analysis of the SDOF system duly considering the uncertainties. For a set of Hermite’s collocation points, the system is analyzed to obtain response time histories and shock spectra. The statistical properties of response quantities are examined, and effectiveness of the gPC expansion based simulation procedureis compared with direct Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. Herein, five different impulse loads, applied on different SDOF systems, are considered. It is observed that shock spectra of all the pulses are sensitive to the uncertainties in region of time period close to pulse duration. Among other response quantities, acceleration is influenced more than the velocity and the displacement. The gPC expansion based simulation technique is observed to be an efficient alternative to computationally demanding MC simulation for quantifying uncertainties. The probability distributions for various response quantities, as obtained through the gPC expansion based simulations, are well compared with that obtained through direct MC simulations.

Impulse Loading; Stochastic Analysis; Uncertainty Quantification.