Moment-based evaluation of structural reliability

Reliability analysis is a widely-used tool to measure a structure's ability of fulfilling safety and serviceability requirements. Existing methods for reliability assessment have, for the most part, been developed based on using the probability distribution functions of input random variables accounting for the uncertainties arising from both structural properties (e.g., material strength, geometry) and external loads. This paper develops a moment-based method for reliability assessment, which relies on the moment information of input variables rather than the probability distribution functions. It is shown that the proposed method is useful in solving multi-dimensional reliability assessment problems with improved efficiency compared with Monte Carlo simulation. The implementation, validity and efficiency of the proposed method are demonstrated through illustrative examples.