Fuzzy-Stochastic Partial Differential Equations

Abstract

We introduce and study a new class of partial differential equations (PDEs) with hybrid fuzzy-stochastic parameters, coined fuzzy-stochastic PDEs. Compared to purely stochastic PDEs or purely fuzzy PDEs, which may treat either only random or only non-random uncertainty in physical systems, fuzzy-stochastic PDEs offer powerful models for accurate description and propagation of the hybrid random and non-random uncertainties inevitable in many real applications. We will use the level-set representation of fuzzy functions and define the solution to fuzzy-stochastic PDE problems through a corresponding parametric problem, and further present theoretical results on the well-posedness and regularity of such problems. We also propose a numerical strategy for computing output fuzzy-stochastic quantities, such as fuzzy failure probabilities and fuzzy probability distributions. We present two numerical examples to compute various fuzzy-stochastic quantities and to demonstrate the applicability of fuzzy-stochastic PDEs to complex engineering problems.