Application of Orthogonal Experimental Design on Reliability and Sensitivity Analysis

Abstract

In the present paper, the effects of four structural parameters at three levels on the reliability and sensitivity of structure are investigated. Sensitivity of parameters is achieved by the range analysis and the significance of parameters is achieved by the variance analysis. A response surface based on orthogonal experimental design and finite element calculations is elaborated so that the relation between the random input variables and structural responses could be established. The First-Order Reliability Method (FORM) as an approximated method is used here to assess the reliability. Comparing with the results of Monte Carlo simulations by ANSYS for a numerical example, the effect of sensitivity analysis has been proved, while the precision of the reliability and sensitivity should be improved in the future.