Reliability based design of frames with limited residual strain energy capacity

The aim of this paper is to create new type of plastic limit design procedures where the influence of the limited load carrying capacity of the beam-to-column connections of elasto-plastic steel (or composite) frames under multi-parameter static loading and probabilistically given conditions are taken into consideration. In addition to the plastic limit design to control the plastic behaviour of the structure, bound on the complementary strain energy of the residual forces is also applied. If the design uncertainties (manufacturing, strength, geometrical) are taken into consideration at the computation of the complementary strain energy of the residual forces the reliability based extended plastic limit design problems can be formed. Two numerical procedures are elaborated. The formulations of the problems yield to nonlinear mathematical programming which are solved by the use of sequential quadratic algorithm.