An efficient coupling of FORM and Karhunen-Loeve series expansion

The topic of this paper is the solution of reliability problems where failure is influenced by the spatial random fluctuations of loads and material properties. Homogeneous random fields are used to model this kind of uncertainty. The first step of the investigation is the random field discretization, which transforms a random field into a finite set of random variables. The second step is the reliability analysis, which is performed using the FORM in this paper. A parametric analysis of the reliability index is usually performed with respect to the random field discretization accuracy. This approach requires several independent reliability analyses. A new and efficient approach is proposed in this paper. The Karhunen-Loève series expansion is combined with the FEM for the discretization of the random fields. An efficient solution of the reliability problem is proposed to predict the reliability index as the discretization accuracy increases