Applications of asymptotic sampling on high dimensional structural dynamic problems

The paper represents application of the asymptotic sampling on various structural models subjected to random excitations. A detailed study on the effect of different distributions of the so-called support points is performed. This study shows that the distribution of the support points has considerable effect on the final estimations of the method, in particular on the coefficient of variation of the estimated failure probability. Based on these observations, a simple optimization algorithm is proposed which distributes the support points so that the coefficient of variation of the method is minimized. Next, the method is applied on different cases of linear and nonlinear systems with a large number of random variables representing the dynamic excitation. The results show that asymptotic sampling is capable of providing good approximations of low failure probability events for very high dimensional reliability problems in structural dynamics.

Research highlights
► We discuss application of the asymptotic sampling on structural dynamic problems.
► Distribution of support points has considerable effect on estimation results.
► An optimization algorithm is proposed which increases accuracy of the estimations.
► Applications of the method on several linear and nonlinear problems are shown.
► The possibility of bias in the estimates of the method is discussed in the article.