Structural Reliability Analysis Using Orthogonalizable Power Polynomial Basis Vector

School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

Abstract

A new method for structural reliability analysis using orthogonalizable power polynomial basis vector is presented. Firstly, a power polynomial basis vector is adopted to express the initial series solution of structural response, which is determined by a series of deterministic recursive equation based on perturbation technique, and then transferred to be a set of orthogonalizable power polynomial basis vector using the orthogonalization technique. By conducting Garlekin projection, an accelerating factor vector of the orthogonalizable power polynomial expansion is determined by solving small scale algebraic equations. Numerical results of a continuous bridge structure on reliability analysis shows that the proposed method can achieve the accuracy of the Direct Monte Carlo method and can save a lot of computation time at the same time, it is both accurate and efficient, and is very competitive to be used in structural reliability analysis.