Structural reliability analysis via global response surface method of BP neural network

When the performance function cannot be expressed exactly, response surface method is often adopted for its clear thought and simple programming. The traditional method fits response surface with quadratic polynomials, and the accuracy can not be kept well, which only the area near checking point coincides well with the real limit state surface. In this paper, a new method based on global response surface of BP neural network is presented. In the present method, all the sample points for training network come from global area, and the real limit state surface can be fitted well in global area. Moreover, the examples and comparison are provided to show that the present method is much better than the traditional one, the amount of calculation of finite element analysis is reduced quite a lot, and the accuracy is increased.