MONTE CARLO-BASED ANALYSIS METHOD CONSIDERING RANDOM INITIAL IMPERFECTIONS

The random distribution of initial geometric imperfections is not considered in current codes which model the imperfections directly or indirectly in different ways, and the adverse effect of initial imperfections is estimated conservatively. In this paper, the random geometric imperfections of the structures and their members have been simulated using Monte Carlo method. In addition, the efficiency of sampling is further improved by Latin Hypercube sampling technique, in which the duplicate samples are reduced in the sampling space. Results indicate that the analysis method considering random initial geometric imperfections has been realized by means of MATLAB program, which is the foundation of the research on the advanced design method accurately and effectively.