A method for estimating the reliability of structural systems with moment-matching and copula concept

It is aimed to propose a copula based systematic quantitative method for system reliability analysis of engineering structures considering multiple dependent failure modes. The principles of the moment matching method, the copula theory and the bound theory are combined to achieve the purpose. As the very first step, the moment estimation of the limit state function of each component is calculated by anchored ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) expansion. The third moment saddle point approximation is then applied to derive the distribution of each performance function and evaluate the reliability index with obtained moments. By introducing copula functions into the narrow bounds theory, the traditional reliability method is improved. The best-fitting copula function is determined to ensure the accuracy of the joint probabilistic modeling between the dependent failure modes. A novel feature of the proposed method is the use of the copula concept, instead of traditional numerical integration commonly used in the joint failure probability estimation. Examples are presented to illustrate the accuracy and applicability of the presented method.