Structural reliability using monte-carlo simulation with variance reduction techniques on elastic-plastic structures

Abstract

A structure is subjected throughout its lifetime to loadings that may cause damage, deterioration and possibly failure. The objective of this paper is to present a method of assessing a structure's reliability and collapse mechanism using Monte-Carlo simulation and variance reduction techniques. The objective of this methodology is to accurately assess the reliability and collapse mechanism for a structure while significantly reducing the number of analyses completed. Structural failure for this methodology may be defined in different ways including: maximum permissible stress or deflection, plastic mechanism, buckling, punching-shear or any other serviceability characteristic. For the procedure proposed here, the failure function is interpolated from values obtained in structural analysis. The advantage of this methodology over classical Monte-Carlo simulation is that no prior knowledge of the failure mechanism is required. Two example structures are presented to obtain the failure probability using the Monte-Carlo method. © 1992.