An efficient evidence-based reliability analysis method via piecewise hyperplane approximation of limit state function

摘要

For evidence-based reliability analysis, whether a focal element belongs to the failure domain is commonly judged by the corresponding extreme values of a performance function in its response domain. In contrast, in this paper, an efficient method by which the ownership relationship between a focal element and the failure domain is directly determined in uncertain variable domain, is proposed via the piecewise hyperplane approximation of limit state function (LSF). The whole uncertainty domain is divided into several sub uncertainty domains on the defined reference direction. The approximate LSF is constructed by the piecewise hyperplane in each sub uncertainty domain, the belief measure and the plausibility measure of reliability analysis can be directly calculated in uncertainty domain through the approximate piecewise hyperplanes of LSF. The proposed evidence-based reliability analysis method is demonstrated by two numerical examples and two engineering applications.