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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433 CCP: 83
PROCEEDINGS OF THE EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL STRUCTURES TECHNOLOGY Edited by: B.H.V. Topping, G. Montero and R. Montenegro
Paper 34
Parameter Uncertainty Effects on the Stability of Cantilever Earth Retaining Structures B. Zeghlache1, A. Mébarki2, B. Tiliouine1 and S. Belkacemi1
1Department of Civil Engineering, Ecole Nationale Polytechnique, Algiers, Algeria
Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
, "Parameter Uncertainty Effects on the Stability of Cantilever Earth Retaining Structures", in B.H.V. Topping, G. Montero, R. Montenegro, (Editors), "Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Computational Structures Technology", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 34, 2006. doi:10.4203/ccp.83.34
Keywords: uncertainties, probability, FORM, reliability, Monte Carlo simulations, sensitivity factor, retaining wall.
Summary
When designing a civil engineering structure, the designer deals with various
sources of uncertainties. The principal ones are physical uncertainties,
materials properties, geometrical characteristics, loads, statistical uncertainties
associated with the random variables, and mechanical model uncertainties [1]. The
probabilistic methods are therefore very helpful in order to evaluate the structural
sensitivity to the randomness of the whole parameters that may be involved. In the
present study, a cantilever soil retaining wall is analyzed and its probability of
structural failure is investigated.
The probabilistic approach is based on a mechanical model, in which the structural
parameters are considered as random variables
A reliability analysis and a sensitivity study are performed. Two kinds of probabilistic approaches are considered: a FORM method as well as Monte Carlo simulations. In the first order reliability methods, the limit state function is approximated by a hyper-plane in the vicinity of the design point [1,2]. When the partial derivates of the limit state function are not available analytically, many geometrical methods might be run. The "rotating planes method" based on a cyclic relaxation method is used in this paper [3].
The Monte Carlo simulation [4], transforms equation (2), as the expectation of the
function
where ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In order to accelerate the Monte Carlo convergence, importance and conditioning techniques are used herein [5]. Three failure mechanisms are considered for the retaining wall: overturning, sliding and ultimate bearing and the mechanical models considered are those commonly used in engineering practice [6]:
In this present study, it appears that some of the variables have a dominant effect for the whole failure modes that are considered. Furthermore, in this particular case, the model used to evaluate the active pressure does not greatly affect the reliability index or the failure probability. But, the structural reliability is greatly influenced by the mechanical model for the bearing capacity. Moreover, there is a great similarity between the three failure methods that have been considered. The Monte Carlo method with conditioning and importance sampling gives larger failure probabilities than the FORM method. References
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