Application of Advanced Reliability Algorithms in Truss Structures

Many truss structures have been destroyed and collapsed one by one all over the world due to overloaded snow and wind load, etc. To investigate the mechanical property of truss structures, OpenSees package is utilized to evaluate reliability and sensitivity of three dimensional truss structures. Accuracy and efficiency of several reliability approaches, i.e., First Order and Second Moment, First Order Reliability Method, Second Order Reliability Method, Importance Sampling and Monte Carlo Method, are systematically compared and investigated. Young's modulus, yield strength, strain-hardening ratio, cross-sectional area of members, and concentrated loads and nodal coordinates in the x, y and z directions are treated as random variables. To diminish the computational effort and meanwhile guarantee the computational accuracy, random variables reduction technique (RVT) is employed in the reliability evaluation of truss structures.