Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Soil, owing to its complex process of deposition, exhibits spatial uncertainty. Deterministic methods of settlement predictions are far from accurate and generally rely on site specific test data. In order to carry out stochastic analysis and get an estimate of the probability of failure, one needs a limit state function expressing the relationship between all input and output variables. Often to preserve the simplicity of a limit state function, there will be many input variables that need to be read from empirical charts and make the limit state function very complex if incorporated in one equation. This paper presents a method where in till a pseudo response surface is constructed, a limit state function that refers to empirical charts is used, and a stochastic analysis based on Monte Carlo simulations in conjunction with the developed response surface is carried out to arrive at the probability of failure. This way, the engineer assessing the settlement need not build a finite element model and construct a response surface out of it. In this paper, this technique is applied on a Level III reliability based design example solved in the literature using Finite Element Method.