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Title:
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Structural Reliability Analysis

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Organizers:
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Seifedine kadry
Faculty of Engineering - Lebanese University
Departement of Mechanical engineering
e-mail: seifo303@hotmail.com - skadry@gmail.com 

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Minisymposium description:
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The fundamental aim of structural reliability analysis is the determination of a safety
level of the structure. Under some hypotheses on the uncertain quantities, and
by defining the state of failure, it can be possible to find the evolution of the
failure probability of the structure along its life span and to verify that the
design satisfies the safety considerations.

The reliability of a structure is traditionally achieved by deterministic methods using 
safety factors calculated generally under conservative estimators of influent parameters. 
Structural reliability analysis methods use probabilistic approaches for assessing safety 
factors or for optimizing maintenance and inspection programs. These methods become essential 
in the frame of long-term maintenance or life extension.

The mechanical-reliability coupling is defined by the combination of finite
element software and reliability algorithms, in such way that the solution can
be obtained in the most effective way. In this kind of approach, the reliability
code drives the finite element analysis procedures and ensures the convergence.

I would like to invite researchers to discuss new numerical or "exact" method for
reliability analysis. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to
Mechanical and Civil engineering, Applied mathematics and numerical analysis.

Aspects of these problems that are of interest are:
. New numerical or exact method for evaluationg the probability of failure.
.                  New coupling mechanical-reliability methods
. Novel algorithms.
. Computational tools.
. New optimization algorithm