Detailed review of:

Reliability of Structures: Analysis and Applications

The book consists of the following 11 chapters followed by Author’s Preface and Introduction:

It is really a very concise and compact book on the subject. The author has spent his “entire professional life in the strength analysis of civil structures, mainly in risk and reliability assessment and probabilistic methods”. This book is backed by the author’s experience of publishing more than 100 technical papers and seven books (in Russian). This is reflected in all the chapters of the book. The author has served in most prestigious civil engineering establishments over four decades in Russia including as professor, department of Structural Mechanics at the Moscow State University of civil engineers and since 1999 is working as independent consultant in San Diego, U.S.A. Readers and researchers familiar with Western literature in engineering would find this book quite readable and friendly. Usually, the notation used in Russian books is found to be different from those in western literature. This becomes one of the handicaps of books from Russia or eastern block. But this is not so with this book. The reviewer feels that this book would help widen the perception of probabilistic design of structures and uncertainty associated with their reliability and risk assessment of such structures. The treatment of subject matter starts with fundamentals and basic concepts and takes a reader to highly advanced treatment of the subject very smoothly. As the table of contents indicates that the author has not left any topic untouched that might be of interest to structural engineers. Starting with optimal probabilistic design to evaluation of failure probability, properties of matter, combinations of various loads, buckling and vibrations, corroding structures etc. the author takes a reader to explain how reliability of existing structure can be evaluated. Each chapter has physical examples to illustrate a particular method. For example, the failure probability calculations in chapter 5 are is explained iteration by iteration. Monte Carlo simulation method is explained in details. Exceptions and conditions of applicability of a method are explained clearly. In short the reviewer feels that the book by Dr. Raizer is a very good reference on the subject and he would like to recommend this book not only to practicing structural engineers but a quite handy book (only146 pages) for all civil engineering students pursuing a course on structure design at graduation or post graduation level. The reviewer believes that it is an excellent treatise on the subject and he would like to recommend to one and all to give this book a closer look to appreciate the amount of information contained in this unique book. The book would be very useful for reliability engineers and those dealing with risk assessment, in general.

Krishna B. Misra

Review published in the International Journal of Performability Engineering in Vol. 7, No. 1, January, 2011, p. 20.