Quadrature method for finite element reliability analysis

Structural reliability analysis of large scale mechanical systems requires the use of a finite element code coupled with a reliability method. The efficiency of the method in terms of number of calls to the finite element code is crucial when each single finite element run is computationally expensive. The proposed quadrature method first computes the statistical moments of the limit state function g by a Gaussian quadrature scheme. These moments are used to approximate the PDF of g, which is then integrated to get the probability of failure. The approach is accurate for reliability indices beta less than or equal to 4 to 5. It is efficient especially when a parametric study is considered.