A SIMPLIFIED SCHEME TO EVALUATE SPATIAL VARIABILITY AND STATISTICAL ESTIMATION ERROR OF LOCAL AVERAGE OF GEOTECHNICAL PARAMETERS IN RELIABILITY ANALYSIS

Abstract

 A basic framework and a method to evaluate uncertainty involved in spatial variability of geotechnical parameters and resulting statistical estimation error in geotechnical reliability analysis are proposed in this study. The soil prole is model by a stationary random field, which is simplication and idealization of the real ground. The local average at an arbitrary point in the random field is estimated from limited samples obtained from the same filed. The two estimation methods are proposed, namely the general estimation and the local estimation The relative positions of samplings and of the construction are not considered in the former, whereas they are considered in the latter. An example is attached to illustrate the proposed method.