RELIABILITY ANALYSIS OF LARGE STRUCTURES USING OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUE

Abstract

This paper presents an optimization approach for the reliability analysis of large-scaled skeletal structures by using the revised PNET method. In order to evaluate the collapse probability of the structural system, it is needed to consider all possible collapse modes and the effects of their mutual correlations. However, it is considerablly difficult to find all possible collapse modes for the highly redundant systems. To overcome this problem, an optimization technique for the PNET method is initially developed to find the approximate collapse probability of the structure, which is defined as the sum of the collapse probabilities of the representative modes classified by the extent of correlation. In order to confirm the validity of this approach, the computational results are compared with the values found by the Monte Carlo simulation using the collapse load analysis. Two fairly large framed structures are numerically analyzed to illustrate the features and scopes of this approach.