AN APPLICATION OF RESPONSE SURFACE METHOD TO STRUCTURAL PARAMETER SENSITIVITY AND RELIABILITY ANALYSIS

It is often necessary to study parameter sensitivity and structural reliability. The test design points of input-variables are obtained by the Box-Behnken matrix method in this paper. According to the responses of specimens, the coefficients of the response surface function are identified by a least-squares regression. The steps of calculating probability sensitivity are as follows, firstly, computing the gradients of input-variables respec-tively, secondly, multiplying the gradient and the related range, and finally normalizing the above quantities. The structural reliability is analyzed by combining the response surface model and the first-order second-moment method. The sensitivity and the reliability of an example are analyzed by the response surface method and the Monte Carlo method in ANSYS. The results of two methods are consistent, which shows that the method in the paper is valid and feasible.