Reliability evaluation of steel beam resting on elastic foundation subjected to moving load using monte carlo simulation and latin hypercube sampling

Abstract

Steel beams resting on the elastic foundation are an applied technique to minimize the impact of thermal expansion and vibrations on civil engineering structures such as bridges and buildings, due to their flexibility and ability to withstand large loads. In practice, the performance of steel beams resting on elastic foundations is affected by random factors such as exceeding load-bearing capacity, undesirable deformations, loss of soil resilience, or environmental corrosion. This study proposes a technique to evaluate the reliability of steel beams resting on the elastic foundation subjected to moving loads using discrete random input parameters through the Latin hypercube sampling and Monte Carlo simulation method. The reliability of steel beams obtained from the proposed method is then compared to that of the traditional Monte Carlo simulation. The results reveal that the proposed technique provides a high accuracy and computational resource savings compared to the traditional Monte Carlo method. Finally, the influence of the random input parameters is also assessed based on the Sobol' sensitivity index.