Impact of sampling techniques on uncertainty propagation with non-linear dynamic analysis

Quantifying the impact of modelling uncertainty on the seismic performance assessment is a crucial issue for existing buildings, considering the partial information available related to material properties, construction details and the uncertainty in the capacity models. It has been proved that the effect of structural modelling uncertainties on the seismic performance of existing buildings can be comparable to that of uncertainty in ground motion representation. In this work, the impact of different sampling techniques such as Standard Monte Carlo simulation and Latin Hypercube sampling with Simulated Annealing on the uncertainty propagation with non-linear dynamic analysis has been investigated. Two alternative non-linear dynamic analysis procedures, namely, Incremental Dynamic Analysis and Cloud Analysis are explored. The types of uncertainty encompass record-to-record variability, structural modelling parameters and the fragility model parameters. A one-to-one sampling approach has been adopted in which each of the ground motion records is paired up with a different realization of the structural model.