Semidefinite programming for uncertain linear equations in static analysis of structures

This paper presents a method for computing a minimal bound that contains the solution set to the uncertain linear equations. Particularly, we aim at finding a bounding ellipsoid for static response of structures, where both external forces and elastic moduli of members are assumed to be imprecisely known and bounded. By using the SS-lemma, we formulate a semidefinite programming (SDP) problem which provides an outer approximation of the minimal bounding ellipsoid. Bounding ellipsoids are computed for nodal displacements of uncertain braced frames as the solutions of the presented SDP problems by using the primal-dual interior-point method.