Benchmark Study on Reliability Estimation in Higher Dimensions of Structural Systems – An Overview

This work is concerned with a Benchmark study on reliability estimation of structural systems, which was suggested in 2004 and is currently in progress (Institute of Engineering Mechanics, University of Innsbruck, 2004). The Benchmark study attempts to assess various recently proposed alternatives for reliability estimation with respect to their accuracy and computational efficiency. The emphasis of this study is on systems which include a large number of random variables. For this purpose three problems have been chosen which cover a wide range of cases of interest in engineering practice and involve linear and non-linear systems with uncertainties in the material properties and/or the loading conditions. The present work provides an overview of the Benchmark study and of the methods compared, as well as the current status of the results obtained