Small-sample probabilistic assessment-FREET software

The aim of the paper is to present methods for efficient structural reliability assessment and to describe a multi-purpose probabilistic software for statistical, sensitivity and reliability analyses of engineering problems. The emphasize is given to the techniques which are developed for an analysis of computationally intensive problems which is typical for a nonlinear FEM analysis. The paper shows the possibility of ”randomization” of computationally intensive problems in the sense of the Monte Carlo type simulation. Latin hypercube sampling is used, in order to keep the number of required simulations at an acceptable level. Random variables are randomly generated under their probability distribution functions, statistical correlation among them is imposed by the optimization technique, called the simulated annealing.