Browsing by Subject "uncertainty analysis"

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    High-Dimensional Reliability Method Accounting for Important and Unimportant Input Variables
    (ASME, 2022-04) Yin, Jianhua; Du, Xiaoping; Mechanical and Energy Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology
    Reliability analysis is a core element in engineering design and can be performed with physical models (limit-state functions). Reliability analysis becomes computationally expensive when the dimensionality of input random variables is high. This work develops a high-dimensional reliability analysis method through a new dimension reduction strategy so that the contributions of unimportant input variables are also accommodated after dimension reduction. Dimension reduction is performed with the first iteration of the first-order reliability method (FORM), which identifies important and unimportant input variables. Then a higher order reliability analysis is performed in the reduced space of only important input variables. The reliability obtained in the reduced space is then integrated with the contributions of unimportant input variables, resulting in the final reliability prediction that accounts for both types of input variables. Consequently, the new reliability method is more accurate than the traditional method which fixes unimportant input variables at their means. The accuracy is demonstrated by three examples.
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    System Reliability Analysis With Autocorrelated Kriging Predictions
    (ASME, 2020-10) Wu, Hao; Zhu, Zhifu; Du, Xiaoping; Mechanical and Energy Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology
    When limit-state functions are highly nonlinear, traditional reliability methods, such as the first-order and second-order reliability methods, are not accurate. Monte Carlo simulation (MCS), on the other hand, is accurate if a sufficient sample size is used but is computationally intensive. This research proposes a new system reliability method that combines MCS and the Kriging method with improved accuracy and efficiency. Accurate surrogate models are created for limit-state functions with minimal variance in the estimate of the system reliability, thereby producing high accuracy for the system reliability prediction. Instead of employing global optimization, this method uses MCS samples from which training points for the surrogate models are selected. By considering the autocorrelation of a surrogate model, this method captures the more accurate contribution of each MCS sample to the uncertainty in the estimate of the serial system reliability and therefore chooses training points efficiently. Good accuracy and efficiency are demonstrated by four examples.