Seismic Reliability Analysis of Energy-dissipation Structures by PDEM-ETDM

Abstract

Energy-dissipation devices have been widely used for improving the performance of civil structures exposed to seismic hazard. In this study, a hybrid approach, which combines the probability density evolution method (PDEM) and the explicit time-domain method (ETDM), is proposed for the seismic reliability analysis of large-scale energy-dissipation structures with uncertain parameters of nonlinear energy-dissipation devices subjected to random seismic excitations. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, a dynamic reliability analysis under random seismic excitations is carried out for a suspension bridge with a main span of 1,200 m equipped with 4 nonlinear viscous dampers with uncertain parameters.