Uncertainty quantification and global sensitivity analysis of seismic fragility curves using kriging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Gaussian process-based framework for uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis of seismic fragility curves, accounting for epistemic and aleatory uncertainties in structural failure probability estimates.

Contribution

It develops a novel methodology to build and calibrate Gaussian process surrogates for seismic fragility curves, incorporating uncertainty propagation and sensitivity analysis.

Findings

Effective surrogate models for seismic fragility curves.

Quantitative sensitivity analysis of mechanical parameters.

Application to a nuclear piping system demonstrates practicality.

Abstract

Seismic fragility curves have been introduced as key components of Seismic Probabilistic Risk Assessment studies. They express the probability of failure of mechanical structures conditional to a seismic intensity measure and must take into account the inherent uncertainties in such studies, the so-called epistemic uncertainties (i.e. coming from the uncertainty on the mechanical parameters of the structure) and the aleatory uncertainties (i.e. coming from the randomness of the seismic ground motions). For simulation-based approaches we propose a methodology to build and calibrate a Gaussian process surrogate model to estimate a family of non-parametric seismic fragility curves for a mechanical structure by propagating both the surrogate model uncertainty and the epistemic ones. Gaussian processes have indeed the main advantage to propose both a predictor and an assessment of the uncertainty of its predictions. In addition, we extend this methodology to sensitivity analysis. Global sensitivity indices such as aggregated Sobol indices and kernel-based indices are proposed to know how the uncertainty on the seismic fragility curves is apportioned according to each uncertain mechanical parameter. This comprehensive Uncertainty Quantification framework is finally applied to an industrial test case consisting in a part of a piping system of a Pressurized Water Reactor.