Multiple stripe analysis for rapid failure probability analysis in support of performance-based wind engineering

• Published in: Engineering structures Vol. 342; p. 120864
• Main Authors: Xu, Liuyun, Spence, Seymour M.J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2025
• Subjects: Multiple stripe analysis; Nonlinear dynamic wind analysis; Performance-based wind engineering; Structural reliability; Uncertainty propagation; Structural reliability; Uncertainty propagation; Performance-based wind engineering; Nonlinear dynamic wind analysis; Multiple stripe analysis
• ISSN: 0141-0296
• DOI: 10.1016/j.engstruct.2025.120864

Notwithstanding the significant advancements in performance-based wind engineering in recent years, there remains a fundamental need for efficient frameworks to evaluate the probabilities of failure associated with various limit states involving the nonlinear dynamic wind response of structural systems. This paper develops a probabilistic framework integrating high-fidelity modeling environments with wind multiple stripe analysis for rapid reliability assessment over a comprehensive range of wind intensities. Within this setting, the elastic resultant base moment is identified as an effective wind intensity measure. Leveraging methods developed in seismic engineering, the proposed wind multiple stripe analysis scheme requires nonlinear dynamic analyses to be carried out at only three wind intensity levels, thereby providing significant computational gains over current state-of-the-art approaches based on direct stochastic simulation for evaluating rare events. Hybrid Latin hypercube sampling is employed to select the wind load samples for which nonlinear dynamic analyses are carried out at each of the three intensity levels. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, a 45-story archetype reinforced concrete building is used as an example. It is shown that the proposed framework enables the rapid estimation of probabilities of failure given various limit states while significantly reducing the number of required nonlinear dynamic analyses. A comparative study based on direct stochastic simulation validates the computational efficiency and numerical accuracy of the approach. •A wind multiple stripe analysis scheme for rapid reliability assessment is introduced.•The scheme requires nonlinear dynamic analyses at only three wind intensity levels.•A Latin hypercube sampling method is presented for identifying where to run nonlinear analysis.•Validation of the framework using a 45-story concrete building is presented.•The computational benefit of the framework over direct stochastic simulation is shown.