Evidende Theory and Differential Evolution for Uncertainty Quantification of Structures

Abstract:

Evidence theory is proposed as an alternative to the classical probability theory to handle the imprecise data situation. In order to alleviate the computational difficulties in the evidence theory based uncertainty quantification (UQ) analysis, a differential evolution based interval optimization for computing bounds method is developed. A typical truss structure with the aleatory and epistemic uncertainties is investigated to demonstrate accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method.

Key words:evidence theory; epistemic uncertainty; differential evolution; uncertainty quantification; truss structures