PROBABILISTIC APPROACH TO DESIGN OF STRUCTURES —A REVIEW

Abstract

Conventional methods for the design of 'structures are in vogue since the era when knowledge about loads on structures and their behaviour was scanty. The concept of conventional. safety factor has an element of uncort ,inty involved in it. hece days when the engineers are more involved with design adequacy and its optimization and also when the statistical nature of t esign parameters is well recognised both by Engin-eers and l thema'icinns, safety factor needs fresh and criti-cal considerations. Probabilistic methods have been develop-ed in which uncertainty in structural performance can be ana-lysed rationally, quantitatively and consistently. The work o,. various research workers has been presented briefly and use of prooaoii istici*deterministic mo..el has been discussed in detail . Thus, variables# represented by a single variable in conventional methods, have been replaced by their mean values and standard deviations about the mean value. Al-gebra of random variables, normally distributed, has been em-ployed for the r,~esign of structural members. Application of this technique has been illustrated by means of examples and further work of research in the application of this method has been suggested.