Accuracy of methods for structural system reliability evaluation

In the last twenty years, the methods for structural system reliability evaluation have evolved considerably. Since these methods are based on different assumptions, it is necessary to evaluate their capabilities. For this reason, a research study was initiated at the University of Colorado at Boulder in order to investigate the accuracy and reliability of various methods for structural system reliability evaluation. This paper emphasizes certain important parametric studies on system reliability methods under uncertainty. The sensitivity of the accuracy of the methods to changes in both strength and load correlations is demonstrated by means of numerical examples.