Review of Structural Reliability Methods with Applicability in Practice

摘要

The importance of structural reliability and safety measure in the lifetime performance is addressed and important uncertainty origins are briefly outlined and categorized in the introduction. Then, the Level II (approximate) time-independent component-reliability methods (FORM/SORM) are summarized in a compact form. Consequently, the Level III (exact) reliability methods are presented with basic formulations. Following the component reliability methods, attention is given to time -independent system reliability methods for parallel and series systems in a conceptual form with essential formulations and boundary conditions of failure probabilities. For complex reliability problems, techniques of the stochastic finite element method are summarized, among which perturbation method, Neumann expansion solution, response surface method, and Branch and Bound method are particularly highlighted. Having explained basic principles of timedependent reliability methods, simplified techniques of failure probabilities are outlined. Attention is given particularly to the transformation of time dependent failure modes into a corresponding time independent mode to facilitate the calculation procedure using load combination models, of which the Turkstra's rule and Ferry Borges-Castanheta load model are worthwhile to mention. Finally, the outcrossing approach, as being an exact and general expression for the failure probability in a time interval, is outlined for both discrete and continuous processes with highlighting lower and upper bounds of a time-interval failure-probability.