• Computational Structural Engineering : An International Journal
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.71-80
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• 2001

A reliability approach to evaluate structural performance has gained increased acceptability and usage over the past two decades. Most reliability analyses are based on the reliability of an individual component without examining the entire structural system. These analyses often result in either unnecessary repairs or unsafe structures. This study uses examples of series, parallel, and series-parallel models of structural systems to illustrate how the component reliabilities affect the reliability of the entire system. The component-system reliability interaction can be used to develop optimum lifetime inspection and repair strategies for structural systems. These examples demonstrate that such strategies must be based on the reliability of the entire structural system. They also demonstrate that the location of an individual component in the system has a profound effect on the acceptable reliability of that component. Furthermore, when a structure is deteriorating over time, the reliability importance of various components is a1so changing with time. For this reason, the most critical component in the early life of the structure may not tie the most critical later.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.91-102
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• 2000

Nowadays, every kind of system is changed so complex and enormous, it is necessary to assure system reliability, product liability and safety. Fault tree analysis(FTA) is a reliability/safety design analysis technique which starts from consideration of system failure effect, referred to as “top event”, and proceeds by determining how these can be caused by single or combined lower level failures or events. So in fault tree analysis, it is important to find the combination of events which affect system failure. Minimal cut sets(MCS) and minimal path sets(MPS) are used in this process. FTA-I computer program is developed which calculates MCS and MPS in terms of Gw-Basic computer language considering Fussell's algorithm. FTA-II computer program which analyzes importance and function cost of VE consists. of five programs as follows : (l) Structural importance of basic event, (2) Structural probability importance of basic event, (3) Structural criticality importance of basic event, (4) Cost-Failure importance of basic event, (5) VE function cost analysis for importance of basic event. In this study, a method of initiation such as failure, function and cost in FTA is suggested, and especially the priority rank which is calculated by computer-aided decision analysis program developed in this study can be used in decision making determining the most important basic event under various conditions. Also the priority rank can be available for the case which selects system component in FMEA analysis.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.557-568
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• 2000

As time-variant reliability approaches become increasingly used for service life prediction of the aging infrastructure, the demand for computer solution methods continues to increase. Effcient computer techniques have become well established for the reliability analysis of structural systems. Thus far, however, this is largely limited to time-invariant reliability problems. Therefore, the requirements for time-variant reliability prediction of deteriorating structural systems under time-variant loads have remained incomplete. This study presents a computer program for $\underline{REL}$iability of $\underline{T}$ime-Variant $\underline{SYS}$tems, RELTSYS. This program uses a combined technique of adaptive importance sampling, numerical integration, and fault tree analysis to compute time-variant reliabilities of individual components and systems. Time-invariant quantities are generated using Monte Carlo simulation, whereas time-variant quantities are evaluated using numerical integration. Load distribution and post-failure redistribution are considered using fault tree analysis. The strengths and limitations of RELTSYS are presented via a numerical example.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1993.10a
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• pp.224-231
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• 1993

This paper is concerned with the influence of changes in stochastic parameters of the important resistance variables such as the strength modelling parameter and material and geometric properties, on the system safety level of TLP structures. The effect of parameters governing the post-ultimate behaviour is also addressed. An extended incremental load method is employed for the present study, which has been successfully applied to the system reliability analysis of continuous structures. The Hutton Field TLP and its one variant called herein TLP-B, are chosen as TLP models in this paper. The results of several parameteric studies lead to useful conclusions relating to the importance of reducing uncertainties in strength formulae and relating the importance of component post-ultimate behaviour to the systems reliability of such structures.

• International Journal of Reliability and Applications
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.73-80
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• 2001

A network, where links have different capacities, is considered to be in functioning state if a specified amount of flow can be transmitted through the network. In this paper, we consider the measures of importance of a link in such networks. We define the structural importance and reliability importance of a link when the required amount of flow is given. We also present the performability importance, which can be used to determine which links should be improved first in order to make the greatest improvement in the expected maximum flow of network. Numerical examples are presented as well for illustrative purpose.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.84 no.3
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• pp.323-335
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• 2022

The main idea of the framework is to seamlessly combine a reasonably accurate and fast surrogate model with the importance sampling strategy. Developing a surrogate model for predicting structures' dynamic responses is challenging because it involves high-dimensional inputs and outputs. For this purpose, a novel surrogate model based on cutting-edge deep learning architectures specialized for capturing temporal relationships within time-series data, namely Long-Short term memory layer and Transformer layer, is designed. After being properly trained, the surrogate model could be utilized in place of the finite element method to evaluate structures' responses without requiring any specialized software. On the other hand, the importance sampling is adopted to reduce the number of calculations required when computing the failure probability by drawing more relevant samples near critical areas. Thanks to the portability of the trained surrogate model, one can integrate the latter with the Importance sampling in a straightforward fashion, forming an efficient framework called TTIS, which represents double advantages: less number of calculations is needed, and the computational time of each calculation is significantly reduced. The proposed approach's applicability and efficiency are demonstrated through three examples with increasing complexity, involving a 1D beam, a 2D frame, and a 3D building structure. The results show that compared to the conventional Monte Carlo simulation, the proposed method can provide highly similar reliability results with a reduction of up to four orders of magnitudes in time complexity.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.27-32
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• 2009

A technical system generally comprise a number of subsystems and components that are interconnected in such a way that the system is able to perform a set of required function. Because of the complex system structure with serial, parallel and bridged connections, some certain subsystems or components are more critical than the others. The main concern of a reliability engineer is to identify potential failures and to prevent these failures from occurring. In order to prevent fatal failures, proper inspections and maintenance actions for each component are required Considering above objectives of reliability engineers and characteristics of a practical system, several practical method for evaluating system and component reliabilities have developed namely Birnbaum's and Fussell & Vesely's measures. However there are several critical weaknesses in traditional calculation process as the target system gets larger. In this paper, a new technique for calculating component's structural importance is proposed and compared to Birnbaum's with representative system examples (serial, parallel. k out of n, and bridge type).

• Proceedings of the Korean Reliability Society Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.405-409
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• 2000

The flow network is considered to be in a functioning state if it can transmit a maximum flow which is greater than or equal to a specified amount of flow. In this paper we consider the measures of importance of a link in the flow network. We define the structural importance and reliability importance of link when the required amount of flow is given. Also, we present the performance importance of link in a flow network. The performance importance can be used to determine which links should be improved first in order to make the greatest improvement in performance of the network. Numerical examples are presented for illustrative purpose.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.41-50
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• 2017

The purpose of this paper is to improve the service tree analysis introduced recently by Geum et al. [15]. Service tree analysis structures the service based on the customer participation perspective and provides a qualitative analysis method categorizing the service elements on the basis of its impact to top service. This paper attempts to apply the concept of reliability importance to the service tree analysis as a perspective of quantitative analysis, which is considered little in Geum et al. [15]. Reliability importance is a measure of the structural impact of the components that make up the system on the system lifetime in reliability engineering field and often used in fault tree analysis. We transform the reliability importance into service importance in accordance with service tree analysis, so that the influence of service elements on the service can be judged and compared. The service importance is defined as the amount of change of the service according to the change of the service element, therefore, it can be utilized as an index for determining a service element for service improvement. In addition, as an index for paired service elements, the relationship between the two service components can be measured by joint service importance. This paper introduces conceptual changes in the process of applying reliability importance to service analysis, and shows how to use the service importance for identifying the priority of service element for the final service and improving customer satisfaction through an example. By using the service importance and joint service importance in service tree analysis, it is possible to make efficient decision making in the process of determining the service elements for analyzing and improving the service.