The Assessment of Structural Reliability: A Review

Considerable progress has been made in the theory of structural reliability in the last 15-20 years, particularly in relation to the analytical treatment of information. Much of this has gone relatively unnoticed by the engineering profession, even though the potential for structural reliability assessments in certain practical problems is now significant. Structural reliability theory has been applied, of course, to structural design code calibration, but has a much wider potential. Particularly in the offshore industry and in large projects it is being used where risk must be specifically considered and where to do so may yield considerable design and construction cost savings. In this paper the basic concepts of structural reliability theory will be reviewed and related to the standard and type of information usually available in engineering studies. An overview will also be given of the various calculation techniques now available.