Multinormal integrals by importance sampling for series system reliability

A structural system with multi-failure modes can be modeled as a series system if it fails whenever any of the failure mode occurs. Applying FORM, failure probability of a series system can be expressed using a complementary standard multinormal integral. However, the integral is increasingly more difficult as the dimension increases. Importance sampling method can be used to deal with such multi-fold integration. Considering the fact that the optimal importance sampling function can be determined for a linear limit state function in a uncorrelated standard normal space, this paper proposes an importance sampling function for multinormal integral as a linear combination of such optimal sampling functions. The accuracy and applicability of the method are investigated using numerical examples. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.