Sensitivity of expected exceedance rate of SDOF-system response to statistical uncertainties of loading and system parameters

Abstract The effects of the statistical uncertainties of the loading and system parameters on the mean exceedance rate of a particular threshold are investigated for a linear SDOF-system with viscous damping. For this purpose the structural loading is described by the well-known stationary Kanai-Tajimi-earthquake model. The analysis is simplified by utilizing an approximate solution for the threshold-crossing rate, for which the error with respect to the exact solution is shown to be small. Each of the parameters involved in the expression for the mean exceedance rate of the stationary response of the structure is considered a random variable. The respective effects of the statistical uncertainties of the parameters on the threshold-crossing rate, as expressed by the first- and second moments, are shown explicitely in the numerical examples.