Structural Risk Analysis and Reliability-Based Design

Existing probability bases of reliability analysis and reliability based design are summarized. The importance of risk and uncertainty considerations in structural evaluation and design are emphasized, and practical methods for risk assessment in terms of failure probability and for development of reliability-based design criteria are described and developed. Advocates the systematic analysis of uncertainty through first-order statistical analysis, and the explicit use of failure (or survival) probability as measure of risk and safety, to fully realize the potentials of probability theory in structural evaluation and design.