RELIABILITY ANALYSIS OF RHS STEEL TRUSSES JOINTS BASED ON THE P-BOXES APPROACH

Abstract

Reliability is one of the main indicators of structural elements mechanical safety. The choice of stochastic models is an important task in reliability analysis for describing the variability of random variables with aleatory and epistemic uncertainty. The article proposes a method for the reliability analysis of RHS (rectangular hollow sections) steel truss joints based on p-boxes approach. The p-boxes consist of two boundary distribution functions that create an area of possible distribution functions of a random variable. The using of p-boxes make possible to model random variables without making unreasonable assumptions about the exact cumulative distribution functions (CDF) or the exact values of the CDF parameters. The developed approach allows to give an interval estimate of the non-failure probability of the truss joints, which is necessary for a comprehensive (system) reliability analysis of the entire truss.