Application of Line Sampling Simulation Method to Reliability Benchmark Problems

A procedure denoted as Line Sampling (LS) has been developed for estimating the reliability of static and dynamical systems. The efficiency and accuracy of the method is shown by application to the subset of the entire spectrum of the posed benchmark problems [12], i.e. in particular linear systems with random properties. The notion of design point excitation for nonlinear system is discussed and its use extended for reliability estimations of conservative nonlinear MDOF systems considering critical conditional excitation. For solving the hysteretic MDOF system with uncertain structural parameters subjected to general Gaussian excitation, however, the general applicable subset procedure [1] has been used combined with importance sampling.