Reliability analysis of wind-excited structures using domain decomposition method and line sampling

In this paper the problem of calculating the probability that the responses of a wind-excited structure exceed specified thresholds within a given time interval is considered. The failure domain of the problem can be expressed as a union of elementary failure domains whose boundaries are of quadratic form. The Domain Decomposition Method (DDM) is employed, after being appropriately extended, to solve this problem. The probability estimate of the overall failure domain is given by the sum of the probabilities of the elementary failure domains multiplied by a reduction factor accounting for the overlapping degree of the different elementary failure domains. The DDM is extended with the help of Line Sampling (LS), from its original presentation where the boundary of the elementary failure domains are of linear form, to the current case involving quadratic elementary failure domains. An example involving an along-wind excited steel building shows the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed methodology as compared with that obtained using standard Monte Carlo simulations (MCS).