Stochastics and Finite Elements - Challenges and Chances

Within many engineering fields, structural design must meet the demands of cost-effectiveness. This leads to lightweight, highly flexible, and consequently vulnerable structures. In order to assess potential risks associated with such a design, the structural analysis must take into account available information on the randomness of loads and structural properties. It means that the analysis should include reliability estimates in an appropriate manner. This may be seen as an additional refinement of structural analysis, like e.g. the higher degree of accuracy as introduced by the Finite Element Method compared to the traditional engineering tools of analysis. However, although the need for stochastic analysis is apparent, there is a lack of software which enables the application of reliability methods by engineers not specialized in the field. Currently, stochastic analysis software is being developed which may be applied successfully by practitioners. Within the scope of structural analysis, these tools may be classified according to the following two categories (see figs.1 and 2):