Evidential uncertainty quantification of the Park–Ang damage model in performance based design

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to develop a comprehensive uncertainty quantification method using evidence theory for Park–Ang damage index-based performance design in which epistemic uncertainties are considered. Various sources of uncertainty emanating from the database of the cyclic test results of RC members provided by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center are taken into account.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, an uncertainty quantification methodology based on evidence theory is presented for the whole process of performance-based seismic design (PBSD), while considering uncertainty in the Park–Ang damage model. To alleviate the burden of high computational cost in propagating uncertainty, the differential evolution interval optimization strategy is used for efficiently finding the propagated belief structure throughout the whole design process.

Findings

The investigation results of this paper demonstrate that the uncertainty rooted in Park–Ang damage model have a significant influence on PBSD design and evaluation. It might be worth noting that the epistemic uncertainty present in the Park–Ang damage model needs to be considered to avoid underestimating the true uncertainty.

Originality/value

This paper presents an evidence theory-based uncertainty quantification framework for the whole process of PBSD.

Citation

Tang, H., Li, D., Deng, L. and Xue, S. (2018), "Evidential uncertainty quantification of the Park–Ang damage model in performance based design", Engineering Computations, Vol. 35 No. 7, pp. 2480-2501. https://doi.org/10.1108/EC-11-2017-0466