Interval uncertainty analysis of elastic bimodular truss structures

Two numerical models are presented for the interval uncertainty analysis of elastic bimodular truss structures. The first one is for the intervals estimation of displacements when constitutive parameters are interval variables, and the second one is for the intervals estimation of unknown constitutive parameters when there exists an interval uncertainty in the measurement. Based on a smoothed FE model, an interval relationship between displacements and bimodular parameters is put forward using Taylor series expansion and interval arithmetic, two deterministic formulae are derived to estimate the uncertain interval bounds of displacements, and a two-step strategy is developed to estimate the intervals of elastic bimodular constitutive parameters as well. Numerical comparisons are provided to verify the proposed approach and the advantage/shortcomings of the proposed approach is discussed.