Structural Reliability Analysis and Prediction

Book Description

Structural reliability has become a discipline of international interest, addressing issues such as the safety of buildings, bridges, towers and other structures. This book addresses the important issue of predicting the safety of structures at the design stage and also the safety of existing, perhaps deteriorating structures. Attention is focused on the development and definition of limit states such as serviceability and ultimate strength, the definition of failure and the various models which might be used to describe strength and loading.

Much consideration is given to problem formulation and to the various techniques which can be applied to problem solution. These include the First Order Second Moment method and their derivatives, as well as various Monte Carlo tchniques. Each of these are described in considerable detail and example applications are given. Structural systems are also described, as is the effect of time on reliability estimation, and on the development of design code rules on the basis of limit state principles as under-pinned by probability theory. Furthermore, procedures for the reliability estimation of existing structures are also included.

The book emphasises concepts and applications, built up from basic principles and avoids undue mathematical rigour. It presents an accesible and unified account of the theory and techniques for the analysis of the reliability of engineering structures using probability theory. A balanced view of the subject is offered here not only for newcomers, but also for the more specialist reader, such as senior undergraduate and post-graduate students and practising engineers in civil, structural, geotechnical and mechanical engineering.

Customer Reviews

I took Structural probability in the winter term and I found this book very helpful. If you are civil engineer, you have to have this book because it shows you how to calibrate your codes such as the ACI 318 factors. The most important chapters to me was ch1-ch5.

I bought this book (at Amazon.com) to get a better understanding on the basic principles of structural reliability assessment (I 'm concerned with the probabilistic estimation of the remaining life of pressurized pipelines containing active corrosion defects in oil and gas distribution pipeline networks in Mexico). This thorough, well organized, volume is in my opinion the most comprehensive treatment available nowadays. It is mainly devoted to the probabilistic structural safety analysis and includes both theoretical foundations and practical examples in a coherent and logical presentation. It follows a clear step by step scheme (a quite useful feature for newcomers) covering basic issues such as measures of structural reliability and more complex and advanced topics including time dependent reliability and resistance and load modeling. The book also contains a brief on probabilistic theory which I've found very useful as a quick (and refreshing) guide. For newcomers, the first two chapters are essential to understand the subject. The author devotes the core of the book to a rigorous, detailed discussion of methods to compute probability of failure in engineering structures with simple and complex (multiple) limit state functions (and their evolution with time). The Monte Carlo integration approach, the first order methods FOM and the first order second moment methods FOSM are reviewed in detail and practical aspects of their computational implementations are given. It is to underline the excellent discussions given of limit state functions in load-resistance space which allow to clearly understand the procedures and strategies used by the above mentioned reliability methods to compute checking points, safety index and probability of failure.