Reliability assessment and automatic selection of dominant structural failure modes by the multiplication factor method.

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the extension and application of a multiplication factor method to the identification of dominant failure modes in structural systems. First, the multiplication factor method proposed for a simple limit state function consisting of two basic variables, i. e., a resistance and a load, is extended to estimate the failure probabilities of the general cases where the resistance and the load effect are expressed as linear combinations of basic random variables. Second, the proposed method is compared through numerical examples with the advanced first-order second-moment method, and its effectiveness is verified. Third, the multiplication factor method is implemented to the automatic selection of dominant failure modes in structural systems by using the branch-and-bound method. Finally, the validity of the proposed procedure is demonstrated by identifying the dominant failure modes which include the non-normal basic variables.