Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
4927830 Structural Safety 2017 13 Pages PDF
Abstract
Time-dependent reliability analysis of deteriorating structures is important in their performance evaluation and maintenance. Various definitions and methods have been used by researchers to predict the time-dependent reliability of structures. In the present study, these methods are first critically reviewed and examined. Among these methods, the stochastic-process-based method is theoretically the most rigorous but also computationally the most expensive. To facilitate the wide application of the stochastic-process-based method in complex problems, an efficient importance sampling method is then proposed in this paper. The proposed method includes a number of improvements formulated to enhance the efficiency and robustness of an existing method proposed by Kurtz and Song, leading to more efficient solutions of time-dependent reliability problems of structural systems with multiple important regions. The validity and efficiency of the new method is demonstrated through three numerical examples.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Engineering Civil and Structural Engineering
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