Abstract:

As an important tool for performance assessment in multi-state systems, the universal generating function approach is introduced and developed aiming at strength reliability analysis of structural systems. Static reliability models of statically determinate and statically indeterminate systems are built by constructing special generating functions, which are used to describe probability distributions of the resistance and the load. Composition operators and performance structure functions thereof are defined to composite different universal generating functions. When composition operators are executed, computational costs can be reduced by means of collecting like terms. The results of theoretical analysis and numerical simulation show that the generating function approach can be widely used for probability modeling of large complex systems with the failure dependence.
Submitted on Dec.19, 2008, received from the Guest Editor on August 25, 2009
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