Bayesian analysis of uncertainty for structural engineering applications

摘要

There has been recent interest in differentiating aleatory and epistemic uncertainties within the structural engineering context. Aleatory uncertainty, which is related to the inherent physical randomness of a sys- tem, has substantially different effects on the analysis and design of structures as compared with epistemic uncertainty, which is knowledge based. Bayesian techniques provide powerful tools for integrating, in a rigorous manner, the two types of uncertainties. In a purely probabilistic viewpoint, the uncertainties merge, resulting in widened probability densities.