ASSESSMENT OF FIRST ORDER RELIABILITY ANALYSIS FOR RIBBED BRIDGE DECKS.

An attractive technique is presented for the prediction of the probabilistic response for simply supported ribbed bridge decks in which the random characteristics of the system parameters and the applied loads are directly incorporated. The obtained solutions for the random response functions are in the form of Fourier series having random coefficients. Two linear models are used to determine the stochastic characteristics of the structural response in terms of the statistical moments of the design parameters and the loading functions. The method is quite general with respect to the loading functions and its statistical representations. For the purpose of illustrating the method, an example is presented.