An enhanced subinterval analysis method for uncertain structural problems

Abstract This paper proposes an enhanced subinterval analysis method to predict the bounds of structural response with interval parameters, which could deal with problems with relatively large uncertainties of the parameters. The intervals are first divided into several subintervals, and two expansion routes are then constructed based on the sensitivity analysis. Two subinterval sets are selected according to the expansion points on the routes, and the first order Taylor expansion method is then adopted to complete the subinterval analysis. Based on the selected subinterval sets, the upper and lower bounds of the structural response are further obtained by employing the interval union operation. An adaptive convergence approach is presented to determine the appropriate number of subintervals. Four numerical examples are investigated to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.