Automated reliability based design of footing foundations

Wilson H. Tang

Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, Hongkong University of Science and Technology, People’s Republic of China

B.K.Low

School of Civil and Structural Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Proceedings, 7^th International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability, ICOSSAR ’97, Kyoto, Japan, Vol. 3, pp. 1837-1840, A.A. Balkema Publishers.

First order reliability method can be implemented efficiently using an optimization tool that resides in most spreadsheet software. Correlated random variables and complicated non-explicit performance functions are dealt with easily. As illustrations, design examples are given to dimension footing foundation for a desired reliability. The reliability for multiple failure modes are also evaluated, and compared with Monte Carlo simulation using spreadsheet.

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