Engineers designing structures must work with incomplete and imperfect models. In standard design situations, safety provisions in codes implicitly account for these uncertainties. However, for more advanced design procedures that are not covered by the code, e.g. when dealing with non-linear dynamic problems, the engineer must explicitly address this uncertainty. A special case of uncertainty arises when time domain analysis is applied for determining the extreme response under wind loading: The statistical uncertainty due to a limited duration of the dynamic simulation. In this paper, we discuss this uncertainty and propose a reliability-based approach to account for this uncertainty in a semi-probabilistic design format. A quantitative relation between the computational efforts made in design and the additional safety required is established. Numerical investigations are performed for large membrane structures analyzed by means of Fluide Structure Interaction (FSI) simulation.     «

Engineers designing structures must work with incomplete and imperfect models. In standard design situations, safety provisions in codes implicitly account for these uncertainties. However, for more advanced design procedures that are not covered by the code, e.g. when dealing with non-linear dynamic problems, the engineer must explicitly address this uncertainty. A special case of uncertainty arises when time domain analysis is applied for determining the extreme response under wind loadin...     »