Structural Reliability Analysis via the Multivariate Gegenbauer Polynomial-Based Sparse Surrogate Model

Structural reliability analysis is usually realized based on a multivariate performance function that depicts failure mechanisms of a structural system. The intensively computational cost of the brutal-force Monte-Carlo simulation motivates proposing a Gegenbauer polynomial-based surrogate model for effective structural reliability analysis in this paper. By utilizing the orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm to detect significant explanatory variables at first, a small number of samples are used to determine a reliable approximation result of the structural performance function. Several numerical examples in the literature are presented to demonstrate potential applications of the Gegenbauer polynomial-based sparse surrogate model. Accurate results have justified the effectiveness of the proposed approach in dealing with various structural reliability problems.