Bridge management systems have become increasingly sophisticated over the past decade and provide valuable information about the structural condition of all bridges in the national database. At the same time, reliability methods have gained increasing prominence and are used to forecast life-cycle performance over many decades of structural life. Such reliability analyses need to be updated bas...

Statistical dependence between failure modes induces a difficulty in evaluating structural reliability. Instead, the dependence is often ignored and the sum of individual reliabilities has been used as a conservative approximation. However, it is not well known that the error of ignoring dependence between failure modes depends on the level of reliability. In many cases, engineering structural ...

The finite-element (FE) method is widely recognized as a powerful tool in modeling structural and geotechnical systems and simulating their response to static and dynamic loads. In addition, numerical optimization is commonly used in many engineering applications, such as structural reliability analysis, FE model updating, structural identification, and structural optimization. This paper focus...

Uncertainties in structural parameters and in the excitation, and consequently in the response, obviously affect the structural reliability considerably. In this work, recent developments in the reliability analysis for the treatment of uncertain linear structures subjected to dynamic loading are presented. Although any reliability problem could be solved in principle by Direct Monte Carlo simu...

The main aim of this paper is to define what imprecise reliability is, and discuss a variety of problems that can be solved by means of a framework of imprecise probabilities. From this point of view, various branches of reliability analysis are considered, including analysis of monotone systems, repairable systems, multi-state systems, structural reliability, software reliability, human reliab...

Through the rapid expansion of information technologies, Learning Management Systems have become one of the most important innovations for delivering education. However, successful implementation and management of these systems are primarily based on the instructors' adoption. In this context, this study aims to understand behavioral intentions of higher education instructors towards Learning M...

This paper describes an approach used to develop retrofit strategies for hospitals and other critical facilities in low to moderate seismic hazard zones, where strong earthquakes are infrequent, but if they should occur, the consequences would be high. Hospitals in New York State and other urban centers in the eastern U.S. fall into this category, where seismic retrofit requires information on ...

This paper examines the application of neural networks (NN) to reliability-based structural optimization of largescale structural systems. The failure of the structural system is associated with the plastic collapse. The optimization part is performed with evolution strategies, while the reliability analysis is carried out with the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) method incorporating the importanc...

24 Three studies were conducted in order to develop and validate a mental toughness instrument 25 for use in military training environments. Study 1 (n = 435) focused on item generation and 26 testing the structural integrity of the Military Training Mental Toughness Inventory 27 (MTMTI). The measure assessed ability to maintain optimal performance under pressure 28 from a range of different st...