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Dang, C., Valdebenito, M. A., Faes, M. G. R., Wei, P. F., & Beer, M. (2022). Structural reliability analysis: A Bayesian perspective. Struct. Saf., 99, 102259.
Abstract: Numerical methods play a dominant role in structural reliability analysis, and the goal has long been to produce a failure probability estimate with a desired level of accuracy using a minimum number of performance function evaluations. In the present study, we attempt to offer a Bayesian perspective on the failure probability integral estimation, as opposed to the classical frequentist perspective. For this purpose, a principled Bayesian Failure Probability Inference (BFPI) framework is first developed, which allows to quantify, propagate and reduce numerical uncertainty behind the failure probability due to discretization error. Especially, the posterior variance of the failure probability is derived in a semi-analytical form, and the Gaussianity of the posterior failure probability distribution is investigated numerically. Then, a Parallel Adaptive-Bayesian Failure Probability Learning (PA-BFPL) method is proposed within the Bayesian framework. In the PA-BFPL method, a variance-amplified importance sampling technique is presented to evaluate the posterior mean and variance of the failure probability, and an adaptive parallel active learning strategy is proposed to identify multiple updating points at each iteration. Thus, a novel advantage of PA-BFPL is that both prior knowledge and parallel computing can be used to make inference about the failure probability. Four numerical examples are investigated, indicating the potential benefits by advocating a Bayesian approach to failure probability estimation.
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Dang, C., Wei, P. F., Faes, M. G. R., Valdebenito, M. A., & Beer, M. (2022). Parallel adaptive Bayesian quadrature for rare event estimation. Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf., 225, 108621.
Abstract: Various numerical methods have been extensively studied and used for reliability analysis over the past several decades. However, how to understand the effect of numerical uncertainty (i.e., numerical error due to the discretization of the performance function) on the failure probability is still a challenging issue. The active learning probabilistic integration (ALPI) method offers a principled approach to quantify, propagate and reduce the numerical uncertainty via computation within a Bayesian framework, which has not been fully investigated in context of probabilistic reliability analysis. In this study, a novel method termed `Parallel Adaptive Bayesian Quadrature' (PABQ) is proposed on the theoretical basis of ALPI, and is aimed at broadening its scope of application. First, the Monte Carlo method used in ALPI is replaced with an importance ball sampling technique so as to reduce the sample size that is needed for rare failure event estimation. Second, a multi-point selection criterion is proposed to enable parallel distributed processing. Four numerical examples are studied to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method. It is shown that PABQ can effectively assess small failure probabilities (e.g., as low as 10(-7)) with a minimum number of iterations by taking advantage of parallel computing.
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