• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.55-69
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• 2009

A quasi ideal importance sampling simulation method combined in the conditional expectation is proposed for the structural reliability estimation. The quasi ideal importance sampling joint probability density function (p.d.f.) is so composed on the basis of the ideal importance sampling concept as to be proportional to the conditional failure probability multiplied by the p.d.f. of the sampling variables. The respective marginal p.d.f.s of the ideal importance sampling joint p.d.f. are determined numerically by the simulations and partly by the piecewise integrations. The quasi ideal importance sampling simulations combined in the conditional expectation are executed to estimate the failure probabilities of structures with multiple failure surfaces and it is shown that the proposed method gives accurate estimations efficiently.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1991.04a
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• pp.34-42
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• 1991

This study is directed for the development of an efficient system-level Importance Sampling Technique for system reliability analysis of bridge structures Many methods have been proposed for structural reliability assessment purposes, such as the First-order Second-Moment Method, the Advanced Second-Moment Method, Computer Simulation, etc. The Importance Sampling Technique can be employed to obtain accurate estimates of the required probability with reasonable computation effort. Based on the observation and the results of application, it nay be concluded that Importance Sampling Method is a very effective tool for the system reliability analysis.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.65-85
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• 2024

The tail probability of a function of a multivariate random variable is not easy to estimate by the crude Monte Carlo simulation. When the occurrence of the function value over a threshold is rare, the accurate estimation of the corresponding probability requires a huge number of samples. When the explicit form of the cumulative distribution function of each component of the variable is known, the inverse transform likelihood ratio method is directly applicable scheme to estimate the tail probability efficiently. The method is a type of the importance sampling and its efficiency depends on the selection of the importance sampling distribution. When the cumulative distribution of the multivariate random variable is represented by a copula and its marginal distributions, we develop an iterative algorithm to find the optimal importance sampling distribution, and show the convergence of the algorithm. The performance of the proposed scheme is compared with the crude Monte Carlo simulation numerically.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.125-140
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• 2011

This study presents an innovative method to estimate the reliability sensitivity based on the low-discrepancy sampling which is a new technique for structural reliability analysis. Two advantages are contributed to the method: one is that, by developing a general importance sampling procedure for reliability sensitivity analysis, the partial derivative of the failure probability with respect to the distribution parameter can be directly obtained with typically insignificant additional computations on the basis of structural reliability analysis; and the other is that, by combining various low-discrepancy sequences with the above importance sampling procedure, the proposed method is far more efficient than that based on the classical Monte Carlo method in estimating reliability sensitivity, especially for problems of small failure probability or problems that require a large number of costly finite element analyses. Examples involving both numerical and structural problems illustrate the application and effectiveness of the method developed, which indicate that the proposed method can provide accurate and computationally efficient estimates of reliability sensitivity.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.115-126
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• 1997

Importance sampling methods have been developed with the aim of reducing the computational costs inherent in Monte Carlo methods. This study proposes a new algorithm called the adaptive kernel method which combines and modifies some of the concepts from adaptive sampling and the simple kernel method to evaluate the structural reliability of time variant problems. The essence of the resulting algorithm is to select an appropriate starting point from which the importance sampling density can be generated efficiently. Numerical results show that the method is unbiased and substantially increases the efficiency over other methods.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.119-129
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• 1991

This study is directed for the development of an efficient Importance Sampling Technique for system reliability analysis of bridge structures. Many methods have been proposed for structural reliability assessment such as the First-order Second-Moment Method, the Advanced Second-Moment Method, Monte Carlo Simulation, etc. The Importance Sampling Technique can be employed to obtain accurate estimates for the system reliability with reasonable computation effort. Based on the results of example analysis, it may be concluded that Importance Sampling Technique is a very effective tool for the system reliability analysis.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.381-389
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• 2017

The kernel density was determined based on sampling points obtained in a Markov chain simulation and was assumed to be an important sampling function. A Kriging metamodel was constructed in more detail in the vicinity of a limit state. The failure probability was calculated based on importance sampling, which was performed for the Kriging metamodel. A pre-existing method was modified to obtain more sampling points for a kernel density in the vicinity of a limit state. A stable numerical method was proposed to find a parameter of the kernel density. To assess the completeness of the Kriging metamodel, the possibility of changes in the calculated failure probability due to the uncertainty of the Kriging metamodel was calculated.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1999.10a
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• pp.351-358
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• 1999

The structural responses of underground structures are examined in probability by using the elasto-plastic stochastic finite element method in which the spatial distributions of material properties are assumed to be stochastic fields. In addition, the adaptive importance sampling method using the response surface technique is used to improve simulation efficiency. The method is found to provide appropriate information although the nonlinear Limit State involves a large number of basic random variables and the failure probability is small. The probability of plastic local failures around an excavated area is effectively evaluated and the reliability for the limit displacement of the ground is investigated. It is demonstrated that the adaptive importance sampling method can be very efficiently used to evaluate the reliability of a large scale stochastic finite element model, such as the underground structures located in the multi-layered ground.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.327-347
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• 2020

We consider a credit portfolio with highly skewed exposures. In the portfolio, small number of obligors have very high exposures compared to the others. For the Bernoulli mixture model with highly skewed exposures, we propose a new importance sampling scheme to estimate the tail loss probability over a threshold and the corresponding expected shortfall. We stratify the sample space of the default events into two subsets. One consists of the events that the obligors with heavy exposures default simultaneously. We expect that typical tail loss events belong to the set. In our proposed scheme, the tail loss probability and the expected shortfall corresponding to this type of events are estimated by a conditional Monte Carlo, which results in variance reduction. We analyze the properties of the proposed scheme mathematically. In numerical study, the performance of the proposed scheme is compared with an existing importance sampling method.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.1172-1180
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• 2017

The application of Monte Carlo (MC) to large-scale fixed-source problems has recently become possible with new hybrid methods that automate generation of parameters for variance reduction techniques. Two common variance reduction techniques, weight windows and source biasing, have been automated and popularized by the consistent adjoint-driven importance sampling (CADIS) method. This method uses the adjoint solution from an inexpensive deterministic calculation to define a consistent set of weight windows and source particles for a subsequent MC calculation. One of the motivations for source consistency is to avoid the splitting or rouletting of particles at birth, which requires computational resources. However, it is not always possible or desirable to implement such consistency, which results in inconsistent source biasing. This paper develops an original framework that mathematically expresses the coupling of the weight window and source biasing techniques, allowing the authors to explore the impact of inconsistent source sampling on the variance of MC results. A numerical experiment supports this new framework and suggests that certain classes of problems may be relatively insensitive to inconsistent source sampling schemes with moderate levels of splitting and rouletting.