Response‐Surface Approach for Reliability Analysis

The present paper introduces and discusses a stochastic finite element method. It can be used for the analysis of structural and mechanical systems whose geometrical and material properties have spatial random variability. The method utilizes a polynomial expansion of the numerical nonlinear structural operator (for which actual analytical form is unknown). The expansion is made according to a response‐surface approximation in terms of spatial averages bf the design variables. The polynomial form is then modified by suitable error factors, one for each geometrical or mechanical property. Each error factor is due to the deviations, of the single property, from its spatial average in the different finite elements. The method demands an accurate design of the experiments to be conducted in order to identify the model parameters. A numerical example has been worked out. In this numerical example, the stresses and the strains in a light‐water reactor pressurized vessel are computed by a stochastic three‐dimensional finite element nonlinear analysis.