• 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.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.149-165
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• 2005

Air spring system was accepted for railway vehicle secondary suspension to reduce and absorb the vibration and noise. The low natural frequency ensures a comfortable ride and an invariably good stiffness. In this paper, the characteristics and durability test was conducted in laboratory by using servo-hydraulic fatigue testing system to reliability evaluation of air spring for electric railway vehicle. The experimental results show that the characteristics and durability of domestic development productions are obtained the good results. And to guarantee the adaption of air spring, the ride comfort and air pressure variation were measured in train test on subway line.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.111-128
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• 2014

The stochastic response surface method (SRSM) and the response surface method (RSM) are often used for structural reliability analysis, especially for reliability problems with implicit performance functions. This paper aims to compare these two methods in terms of fitting the performance function, accuracy and efficiency in estimating probability of failure as well as statistical moments of system output response. The computational procedures of two response surface methods are briefly introduced first. Then their capabilities are demonstrated and compared in detail through two examples. The results indicate that the probability of failure mainly reflects the accuracy of the response surface function (RSF) fitting the performance function in the vicinity of the design point, while the statistical moments of system output response reflect the accuracy of the RSF fitting the performance function in the entire space. In addition, the performance function can be well fitted by the SRSM with an optimal order polynomial chaos expansion both in the entire physical and in the independent standard normal spaces. However, it can be only well fitted by the RSM in the vicinity of the design point. For reliability problems involving random variables with approximate normal distributions, such as normal, lognormal, and Gumbel Max distributions, both the probability of failure and statistical moments of system output response can be accurately estimated by the SRSM, whereas the RSM can only produce the probability of failure with a reasonable accuracy.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.80-85
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• 2013

This paper describes a probabilistic structural design method of composite propulsion system by comparing safety factor based on average value and allowable value with structural reliability. Generally, the required structural safety factor and reliability of composite pressure vessel are 1.5 and 0.999, respectively. In the case of structural design using average strength, the safety factor which satisfies the required structural reliability depends on the variation of fiber strength. However, the structural design using allowable value shows constant safety factor for the variation of fiber strength, because the allowable value of fiber strength is calculated by considering the variation of fiber strength. Through the analysis results, it was known that the fiber strength is the most important design random variable for the structural design of composite pressure vessel and the variation of fiber strength must be minimized to develop the high performance composite propulsion system.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1995.04a
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• pp.73-81
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• 1995

In Korea, the pilot construction of the first high-speed railroad on the Seoul-Pusan has already started 2 years ago. In the thesis, an attempt is made to develop reliability-based integrity-assessment models for the computer-aided control and maintenance of high-speed railroad bridges. The strength limit state models for PC railroad bridges encompass the bending and shear strengths as well as the strength interaction equations which simultaneously take into the element and system reliablities of the proposed limit states and reliability models. Then, the actual load carrying capacity and the realistic safety of bridges are evaluated using the system reliability-based equivalent strength, and the results are compared with those of the element reliability-based or conventional methods. Various parametric studies are performed for the proposed reliability-based safety and integrity-assessment models using the actual PC box girder bridges used in the pilot construction. And the sensitivity analyses are performed for the basic random variables included in strength limit state models. It is concluded that proposed models may be practically applied for the rational assessment of safety and integrity of high speed railroad bridges.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.555-569
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• 1998

The reliability of antenna tower designed for a n-year design wind speed is determined by considering the variability of the strength of the component members and of the mean wind speed. For obtaining the n-year design wind speed, maximum annual wind speed is assumed to follow Gumbel Type-1 distribution. Following this distribution of the wind speed, the mean and standard deviation of stresses in each component member are worked out. The variability of the strength of members is defined by means of the nominal strength and a coefficient of variation. The probability of failure of the critical members of tower is determined by the first order second moment method (FOSM) of reliability analysis. Using the above method, the reliability against allowable stress failure of the critical members as well as the system reliabilities for a 75 m tall antenna tower, designed for n-year design wind speed, are presented.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.81 no.4
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• pp.429-441
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• 2022

A probabilistic assessment of the seismic-excited buildings with a multiple-tuned-mass-damper (MTMD) system is carried out in the presence of uncertainties of the structural model, MTMD system, and the stochastic model of the seismic excitations. A free search optimization procedure of the individual mass, stiffness and, damping parameters of the MTMD system based on the snap-drift cuckoo search (SDCS) optimization algorithm is proposed for the optimal design of the MTMD system. Considering a 10-story structure in three cases equipped with single tuned mass damper (STMS), 5-TMD and 10-TMD, sensitivity analyses are carried out using Sobol' indices based on the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) method. Considering different seismic performance levels, the reliability analyses are done using MCS and kriging-based MCS methods. The results show the maximum structural responses are more affected by changes in the PGA and the stiffness coefficients of the structural floors and TMDs. The results indicate the kriging-based MCS method can estimate the accurate amount of failure probability by spending less time than the MCS. The results also show the MTMD gives a significant reduction in the structural failure probability. The effect of the MTMD on the reduction of the failure probability is remarkable in the performance levels of life safety and collapse prevention. The maximum drift of floors may be reduced for the nominal structural system by increasing the TMDs, however, the complexity of the MTMD model and increasing its corresponding uncertainty sources can be caused a slight increase in the failure probability of the structure.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.499-521
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• 2016

In this paper, a probabilistic- and finite element-based approach to evaluate and predict the lifetime performance of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges undergoing various maintenance actions is proposed with the time-variant system reliability being utilized as a performance indicator. Depending on their structural state during the degradation process, the classical maintenance actions for RC bridges are firstly categorized into four types: Preventive type I, Preventive type II, Strengthening and Replacement. Preventive type I is used to delay the onset of steel corrosion, Preventive type II can suppress the corrosion process of reinforcing steel, Strengthening is the application of various maintenance materials to improve the structural performance and Replacement is performed to restore the individual components or overall structure to their original conditions. The quantitative influence of these maintenance types on structural performance is investigated and the respective analysis modules are written and inputted into the computer program. Accordingly, the time-variant system reliability can be calculated by the use of Monte Carlo simulations and the updated the program. Finally, an existing RC continuous bridge located in Shanghai, China, is used as an illustrative example and the lifetime structural performance with and without each of the maintenance types are discussed. It is felt that the proposed approach can be applied to various RC bridges with different structural configurations, construction methods and environmental conditions.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1992.04a
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• pp.51-57
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• 1992

The primary objective of this study is the development of second moment methods for the efficient reliability evaluations of structural systems. Two methods are presented. One is the improved first order reliability method (IFORM), and the other is the modified probabilistic network evaluation technique (MPNET). For the purpose of verifying the proposed methods, example analyses are carried out on several cases with two failure modes, a plane frame structure involving three failure modes and simplified parallel member models for fatigue reliability evaluations of offshore structures. Numerical results indicate that the effectiveness of the proposed methods over the conventional ones (i.e., the FORM and the PNET) increases very significantly as the number of failure modes of the system increases.