Improved Response Surface Method Using Modified Selection Technique of Sampling Points

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Recently, due to the increasing attention to the structural safety under uncertain environments, many researches on the structural reliability analysis have been peformed. Some useful methods are available to evaluate performance reliability of structures with explicit limit states. However, for large structures, in which structural behaviors can be analyzed with finite element models and the limit states are only expressed implicitly, Monte-Carlo simulation method has been mainly used. However, Monte-Carlo simulation method spends too much computational time on repetitive structural analysis. Many alternative methods are suggested to reduce the computational work required in Monte-Carlo simulation. Response surface method is widely used to improve the efficiency of structural reliability analysis. Response surface method is based on the concept of approximating simple polynomial function of basic random variables for the limit state which is not easily expressed in explicit forms of design random variables. The response surface method has simple algorithm. However, the accuracy of results highly depends on how properly the stochastic characteristics of the original limit state has been represented by approximated function, In this study, an improved response surface method is proposed in which the sampling points for creating response surface are modified to represent the failure surface more adequately and the combined use of a linear response surface function and Rackwitz-Fiessler method has been employed. The method is found to be more effective and efficient than previous response surface methods. In addition more consistent convergence is achieved, Accuracy of the proposed method has been investigated through example.