• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.98-108
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• 1996

In the reliability analysis of general structures, the limit state equations are implicit and cannot be described in closed form. Thus, sampling methods such as the Crude Monte-Carlo simulation, and probabilistic FEM are often used, but these methods are not so effective in view of computational cost, because a number of structural analysis are required and the derivatives must be calculated for probabilistic FEM. Alternatively the response surface approach, which approximates the limit state surface by using several results of structural analysis in the region adjacent to MPFP, could be applied effectively. In this paper, the central composite design, Bucher-Bourgund method and the approximation method using artificial neural network are studied for the calculation of probability of failure by the response surface method. Through the example comparisons, it is found that Bucher-Bourgund method is very effective and Neural network method for the reliability analysis is comparable with other methods. Specially, the central composite design method is found to be rational and useful in terms of mathematical consistency and accuracy.