Kriging response surface reliability analysis of a ship-stiffened plate with initial imperfections

Abstract

The use of structural reliability methods with implicit limit state functions (LSFs) shows the increasing demand for efficient stochastic analysis tools, because the structural behaviour predictions are often obtained by finite element analysis. All stochastic mechanics problems can be solved by Monte Carlo simulation method, nevertheless, in most cases, at a prohibitively high computational cost. Several approximations can be achieved using first-order reliability method (FORM) and second-order reliability method and response surface methods. In this paper, a method that combines the FORM and Kriging interpolation models, as response surface, is proposed. The prediction accuracy of the Kriging response surface obtained from different sampling techniques is assessed, and the failure probability estimates calculated by the FORM using the classical second-order polynomial regression models and the Kriging interpolation models as surrogates of nonlinear LSFs are compared. The usefulness and efficiency of the reliability analysis using the Kriging response surface are demonstrated on the basis of existing results available in the literature and with an application problem of a stiffened plate structure with initial imperfections.

Keywords::

• reliability
• Kriging interpolation models
• response surface
• stiffened plate
• initial imperfections

Notes

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Additional information

Funding

Xinghua Shi has been funded by the Natural Science Foundation of the Higher Education Institutions of Jiangsu Province, China [grant numbers 14KJB580005 and 13KJA570001], and a project by Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), during his stay in Portugal where this work as made. This work has been made in the scope of the project ‘Adaptive methods for reliability analysis of complex structures’ that is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia – FCT) under the contract PTDC/ECM/115932/2009.