Probabilistic Analysis of Loads

Pardeep Kumar
NIT Hamirpur HP
Introduction
 Loads on structure are stochastic in nature. They vary
with space and time. This spatial and temporal variability
is to be taken care of in the design.
 In recent years, a significant amount of live load survey
has been conducted in many countries. At the same time,
the trend has been set up to develop probabilistic limit
state design and reliability based codes.
 The characteristics of the loading is probably the most
important parameter to a reliability based analysis and
design.
Load as a Stochastic Process
 Loads or actions in general are the forces acting on the
structures due to external influences (self weight,
superimposed loads, snow, wind and wave loads) and
imposed deformations (differential settlements and
temperature variations). Loads are subjected to random
variations in magnitude and position with time.
 Loads are, therefore, described as time varying, free
positioning, and dynamic effect producing and hence loads
are to be modelled as a stochastic process.
 A single time history representing a random phenomenon
is called a sample function. When this evolves in time, it
leads to a stochastic process.
 A sample function of a continuous time varying stochastic
process of load X(t) in which x(t1) is the magnitude of a
time varying load X(t) at time t1.This X(tl) is called the
arbitrary point-in-time load.
 In the case of reliability study, the treatment of load as a
stochastic process is inconvenient. For practical reliability
analyses, it is necessary to work with the random variable
representation of load rather than with the random
process representation.
 Again, in the case of reliability study, the designer is
interested in the value of the maximum load that is likely
to occur during the life of the structure. This load is called
lifetime maximum load.
 Ultimately one is interested to know the probability
distribution of this load.
Dead Load
 Permanent loads are considered as dead load. This is
mainly the weight of the structural system. This may
undergo a little reduction because of wear and tear
during its lifetime. This is negligible and can be ignored.
 Dead load may undergo increase because of the addition
of some partition wall or covering during the life of the
building. These may be rare events. This also induces a
modest change only.
 Hence the dead load can be assumed to remain constant
in time throughout the life of the structure.
Dead Load
 Hence the dead load is modelled with a normal
probability distribution. The variability in dead load is
strongly affected by the weights of nonstructural items,
such as roofing, partitions, etc.
 As there is a tendency to underestimate the total dead
load, it is assumed that the ratio of the mean load to
nominal load is 1.05, and the coefficient of variation is
0.10 for code calibration.
Live Load
 Live loads may in general, be defined as any load produced
by the occupancy of the building. Nonpermanent gravity
floor loads arising during the service life of the buildings
are considered as live loads.
 The total live load on a floor is considered under two
components, viz. (i) a sustained load component (long
term), (ii) extraordinary load (transient load) component.
Live Load
Sustained Load
 A sustained load is the load of furniture, equipment and other loads
needed for the activity and the normal personnel involved in the
activity.
 Sustained loads shown may change at discrete times, but in between
changes, remain relatively constant. A change at discrete times may
be thought of as change due to change of occupancy (tenancy).
 It may be noted in Fig. that sustained loads may be entirely absent
for a certain duration. This may be considered as the time gap during
change of tenants.
 This is referred to as the arbitrary point-in-time, load, Lapt. The PDF
of this load is also shown. This load is a spatially varying random
function.
 This is assumed constant in time within a particular change of
occupancy.
 It is therefore known as the long term load. The load changes with
change of occupancy are assumed to occur as poisson arrivals.
Extraordinary Load
 This arises from infrequent clustering of people above
and beyond normal personnel load. That is, the extra
personnel load. This extraordinary load (EL) is also due to
the event when many pieces of furniture or equipment
have been gathered together in one place at some instant
of time, for example, at remodelling events.
 The EL is very unpredictable and it occurs with relatively
high intensities and in short durations (in most cases a
couple of hours). The term short duration is used in the
sense that their durations are very small relative to
permanent and sustained load.
 The total load is therefore split up into three parts. This is
a simplified model. The division is mainly on the difference
in the time history between the loads. As the dead load,
already discussed, has been considered as Constant in
time and can be modelled with a probability distribution,
it can be combined with other loads.
Live Load Survey
 Conduct of load survey to know the loads based on the actual field data
for development of newer codes
 The live load survey is the process of measuring the actual floor loads, LaPt,
and collecting the extensive scientific and systematic data, and information,
such as
 (i) building data which includes geographic region, location, height and
number of storeys, age, type of occupancy, floor plans of building, layout of
framing systems, number of rooms/bays, floor area of building, etc.,
 (ii) occupancy data giving information about the types of firm, spatial
orientation and duration,
 (iii) room/bay data, which incorporates details about the floor level, room
number, location of the room, room use, room size, floor area, openings,
surface finishings, floor coverings, occupants including number and weight,
item description including location, contents and weights, etc.,
 (iv) extraordinary load information about occasions of persons gathered,
frequency, furniture stacking occasions, painting and remodelling, etc.
 The scientific live load survey provides a sound statistical
basis for
 (i) the adoption of an appropriate probability model for
live loads,
 (ii) the proper assignment of parameters to the
probabilistic model,
 (iii) the refinement of probabilistic load models,
 (iv) better understanding of the randomness of live loads,
and
 (v) the modification of the existing loading standards.
Simple Statistical Analysis of Live Loads
 Assume that live load survey has been conducted in a building
and the position and magnitude of loads are known on each
bay (or room) of the building. Assume constant area. The floor
load intensity (FLI), Q, is the total load acting on a bay (or
room) in a floor divided by the floor area of the bay (or
room).
 This uniformly distributed load intensity, which would produce
the same load effect as the actual set of loads, is called the
equivalent uniformly distributed load (EUDL). Let EUDL be
designated as L.
 This is converted by using influence surface methods or
energy methods or finite element methods, taking into
account the boundary conditions and the configuration of the
supporting systems.
 Once a probability model is selected and the parameters
established for L, the characteristic load, Lk, can be fixed. If
Pk is the probability of a load greater than Lk, then
 Pk = P[L > Lk] = 1 - P(L  Lk)
 = 1 -FL(Lk) (5.l)
 or Lk = FL-1(l - Pk) (5.2)
 If the occupancy does not change during the lifetime of
the building, the above calculated load gives the lifetime
maximum live load with a probability of its exceedance
equal to Pk.
 Assuming that the whole building is occupied by only one
tenant (i.e. single tenant model) at a time, let the building
be occupied by N tenants during the lifetime of the
building. The live load during each occupancy is a random
variable. Let L1, L2, ... , Li ... , LN be the random variables
representing the maximum live load intensity (EUDL)
during each occupancy.
 It is assumed that the live load does not change with
respect to time during each occupancy. If FLi( ) is the CDF
of Li, and FLm( ), the CDF of the lifetime maximum live
load, Lm, then the probability of Lm less than or equal to
a particular load, say characteristic load Lk, during the
lifetime of the building is given by
Area Dependent Sustained Load Intensity
Model
 Previous case it is assumed that the bay or room area is
constant and the floor load does not depend on the area.
 But actually it is area dependant.
 Live loads vary from building to building, floor to floor,
bay to bay, point to point, and also time to time. To
quantify these variations and uncertainties, to some
extent rationally, the instantaneous live load survey data
of arbitrary point-in-time loads on floors of selected bays
of selected buildings have to be analysed to model live
loads with certain assumptions and simplifications.
Statistical Assumption
 The load intensity on a floor can be characterized as a
stochastic process which is assumed stationary both in
space and time.
 The assumption of stationarity in space implies that the
load in buildings, used for the same type of occupancy, can
be represented with the same statistical distribution.
 The assumption of stationarity in time implies that the
statistical distribution of the load from one point in time
to another is the same. This assumption is needed
because continuous load survey can not be conducted.
Load Intensity
 The sustained load intensity at any location on a floor of a
building is modelled as the superposition of
 (i) the main trend,
 (ii) the periodic components, and
 (iii) the random fluctuations
 According to the assumption about stationarity in space, a
constant mean load intensity is chosen. Hence the main trend
is the mean load intensity, which is assumed to be constant for
a type of occupancy.
 The periodic components are the variations in the load
intensity around the mean due to different buildings, different
floors, and different bays.
 Random fluctuations take into account unknown uncertain
deviations from the mean load intensity.
 The load intensity model is assumed to be noncorrelative.
That is, the correlations between load intensities from
floor to floor, and bay to bay, and point to point which
have a very little effect on the total load (or load effect)
are not considered.
WIND LOAD
 The wind load, W, acting on a structure can be written in the form
 W=BV2
 where B is a parameter covering all components of the wind load
(except the basic wind speed), i.e. pressure coefficients, area
reduction factors, velocity multipliers for height and exposure,
etc. V is the wind speed, generally referred to a height of 10 m.
 The modelling of wind load is much more complex and
difficult than the modelling of speed. Because the velocity
appears in the equation as a squared value, its statistics is very
important. However, the uncertainties in the various factors
contained in B contribute to the overall variability in the wind
load.
Wind Speed
 The wind velocity is stochastic in nature. It has spatial and
temporal variation during a storm. Wind speed, V(X, t), in a
given direction in a point of position vector X, at time t during a
storm is generally considered as the sum of two terms
 V(X, t) = Vo(X) + V1(X, t) in which Vo(X) is the steady component
equal to the average velocity during the storm and VI(X, t) is a
zero-mean process describing the gusts.
 If only the static behaviour of the structure is involved, the
velocity is expressed in the form
 V = V*(z)G
 where V* is the steady (average) velocity at a reference height (10
m), (z) is the multiplication factor for height, and G the gust
factor.
 The maximum value of V over an appropriate time interval T
is of interest in structural reliability analysis. For this
purpose, the mean arrival rate (or the mean occurrence
interval T = l/λ) of V must be specified.
 Hence, it is necessary to associate return periods T with the
values of wind speed.This can be done on the basis of
cumulative distribution of yearly maximum wind speed.
 The wind velocity recorded at any locality is extremely
variable and in addition to steady wind at any time, there
are effects of gusts which may last for a few seconds.
Hence only these extreme wind forces are of interest to
the structural engineer.
 The continuous recording of 'wind velocities is generally
carried out in meteorological stations. Out of these
values, one is interested in the extreme or the maximum.
 Since the- yearly- maximum, wind speed can be
interpretated as the largest of daily values or perhaps the
largest of many gusts, velocities, the statistical behaviour
of the yearly-maximum wind speed is represented by two.
types-of extremal distributions with unlimited Upper tail.
 One is the Type I extremal (largest) distribution, so- called
Gumbel distribution and, the ,other one is the Type 2
extremal (largest) distribution, also called Frechet
distribution.
 The choice of the underlying .distribution can be made
after the analysis of fitting closeness to the data.
Return Period
 A very common problem in wind analysis is to- assume
the return of an observed extreme wind speed or
cyclone. For design purposes, one often attempts to
estimate the magnitude of an extreme wind of a
particular return period. The return period, R, which is
called the mean recurrence interval, is defined as
1 1
R 
p 1  Fv Vs 
 where Vs is the specified design wind speed, Fv(v) is the CDF
of yearly maximum wind speed, V, and p is the probability
of wind speed V exceeding Vs in any year.
Estimation of Lifetime Design Wind Speed
 If vd is the lifetime design wind speed, 1 - Fv(vd) is the
probability of the annual extreme wind speed exceeding
the design value vd· Hence, the probability of no extreme
wind exceeding Vd in the first m years is [Fv(vd)]m
 The probability of atleast one extreme speed exceeding
vd is

 Here pm and m are chosen by the designer

 For example, if m = 50 years and the designer has chosen
a chance of the design wind speed being exceeded to be
P50 = 0.05 or one in twenty, then the value F computed by
above equation becomes equal to 0.9989746. (It is to be
noted that this corresponds to a return period of 975
years). The characteristic wind speed for the ultimate limit
state is defined as the wind gust speed with an estimated
probability of exceedence of five per cent in a lifetime
period of fifty years of the structure. Based on this
definition, substituting m = 50 and P50 = 0.05 , the
computed design speed Vd becomes the characteristic wind
speed for the ultimate limit state.
Probability Model for Wind Load
 the wind load on structure can be written in the 'for~
 W= BV2
 where B is a parameter covering all components of the wind
load except the basic wind speed. The parameter may be
assumed to be made up of the product of the number of
variables as follows .
 B = KC E G D
 where K is the analysis factor, C is the pressure coefficient
depending on the geometry of the structure, E is the exposure
coefficient depending on the location e.g, urban area or open
country), G is a gust factor depending upon the turbulence of
the wind and the dynamic interaction between the structure
and wind and D is a directionality factor to take into account the
effects of wind direction.
 If V follows the Type I distribution, the lifetime design
speed for m years, Vm, also follows the Type I distribution ..
The mean and coefficient of variation of Vm are given by
 
 v ln m 
6
Vm  V 1 
  
or  Vm   V 
V
v m  v
Vm
 Vm and Vm are the mean and coefficient of variation of
Vm.
 The approximate mean and coefficient of variation of W
can be found out by the following expression assuming all
variables as independent.
2
W  K C E G DV
W 2   K 2   C 2   E 2   G 2   D 2  2V 2
 Since W is the product of the number of random variables, the
probabilistic model for W may tend towards the lognormal
distribution. However, Ellingwood has proposed Type I extremal
(largest) distribution W for the 'assumed mean and coefficient
of variation of the different variables.