STRUCTURAL RELIABILITY UNDER INCOMPLETE PROBABILITY DATA

Abstract

The collapse of structural systems in civil engineering is a result of decisions taken under the conditions that are uncertain and failures of varying nature such as temporary failures, design failures and failures resulting from natural hazards that are needed to be addressed. An art of formulating a mathematical model through which one can get answer to the question: “What is the probability that a structure behaves in a specified way when given that one or more of its material properties or geometric dimensions and properties are of a random or incompletely known nature, and/or that the actions on the structure in some respects have random or incompletely known properties?” Probabilistic analysis of a structure is an extension to analysis of a structure that are deterministic in nature which leads to formulation of a mathematical model through which one get an answer to the question: “How is a structure behaving when its material properties, geometric properties and actions all are uniquely given?” The results can help in determining the reliability of a structure which under a configuration of a given load has sufficient load carrying capacity that are predicted down even to the minute detail. Software are available in the modern era to analyze the reliability of the structure, One of them used in this project is named as COMREL.