Towards efficient reliability methods with applications to industrial problems

In this paper, a number of reliability methods are investigated with a focus on the improvement of accuracy and efficiency, aiming at the application to large-scale industrial problems. These methods include approximation and simulation approaches, such as the widely known First-Order Reliability Method (FORM) and the Directional Sampling (DS) concept. The methods are optimized, to increase their robustness and keep computational cost at low levels, in order to extend their applicability to a wide range of problems. A series of examples is provided, computed by coupling the reliability methods with a commercial finite element software package.