Principles of Verification and Validation

This paper discusses the concepts of verification and validation in computational mechanics with special attention to structural fire engineering, by referring to recently published papers and guides on V&V that define some best practices and show directions for future development. The perspective of an analyst, who develops computational models, makes runs, and analyses numerical results mostly using software based on the finite element method, is presented. The considerations emphasize practical problems encountered in the V&V process, potential sources of errors and uncertainties, the importance of sensitivity study, new ideas regarding the relationship between validation and verification, differences between calibration and validation, new aspects of the validation metrics, and guides for designing validation experiments. The discussion is illustrated by computational problem examples.