Nonstationary Narrow-Band Response and First-Passage Probability

The notion of a nonstationary narrow-band stochastic process is introduced without reference to a frequency spectrum, and the joint distribution function of two consecutive maxima is approximated by use of an envelope. Based on these definitions the first passage problem is treated as a Markov point process. The theory is applied to the response of a linear oscillator excited by a stationary process from t equals 0, and a simple algebraic relation between the nonstationary and stationary correlation functions of the response is derived.