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These are the proceedings of the 5th International Probabilistic Workshop. Even though the 5th anniversary of a conference might not be of such importance, it is quite interesting to note the development of this probabilistic conference. Originally, the series started as the 1st and 2nd Dresdner Probabilistic Symposium, which were launched to present research and applications mainly dealt with at Dresden University of Technology. Since then, the conference has grown to an internationally recognised conference dealing with research on and applications of probabilistic techniques, mainly in the field of structural engineering. Other topics have also been dealt with such as ship safety and natural hazards. Whereas the first conferences in Dresden included about 12 presentations each, the conference in Ghent has attracted nearly 30 presentations. Moving from Dresden to Vienna (University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences) to Berlin (Federal Institute for Material Research and Testing) and then finally to Ghent, the conference has constantly evolved towards a truly international level. This can be seen by the language used. The first two conferences were entirely in the German language. During the conference in Berlin however, the change from the German to English language was especially apparent as some presentations were conducted in German and others in English. Now in Ghent all papers will be presented in English. Participants now, not only come from Europe, but also from other continents. Although the conference will move back to Germany again next year (2008) in Darmstadt, the international concept will remain, since so much work in the field of probabilistic safety evaluations is carried out internationally. In two years (2009) the conference will move to Delft, The Netherlands and probably in 2010 the conference will be held in Szczecin, Poland. Coming back to the present: the editors wish all participants a successful conference in Ghent.

These are the proceedings of the 6th International Probabilistic Workshop, formerly known as Dresden Probabilistic Symposium or International Probabilistic Symposium. The workshop was held twice in Dresden, then it moved to Vienna, Berlin, Ghent and finally to Darmstadt in 2008. All of the conference cities feature some specialities. However, Darmstadt features a very special property: The element number 110 was named Darmstadtium after Darmstadt: There are only very few cities worldwide after which a chemical element is named. The high element number 110 of Darmstadtium indicates, that much research is still required and carried out. This is also true for the issue of probabilistic safety concepts in engineering. Although the history of probabilistic safety concepts can be traced back nearly 90 years, for the practical applications a long way to go still remains. This is not a disadvantage. Just as research chemists strive to discover new element properties, with the application of new probabilistic techniques we may advance the properties of structures substantially. (Auszug aus Vorwort)

Die heutige Welt der Menschen wird durch große Dynamik geprägt. Eine Vielzahl verschiedener Prozesse entfaltet sich parallel und teilweise auf unsichtbare Weise miteinander verbunden. Nimmt man z.B. den Prozess der Globalisierung: Hier erleben wir ein exponentielles Wachstum der internationalen Verknüpfungen von der Ebene einzelner Menschen und bis zur Ebene der Kulturen. Solche Verknüpfungen führen uns zum Begriff der Komplexität. Diese wird oft als Produkt der Anzahl der Elemente eines Systems mal Umfang der Verknüpfungen im System verstanden. In anderen Worten, die Welt wird zunehmend komplexer, denn die Verknüpfungen nehmen zu. Komplexität wiederum ist ein Begriff für etwas unverstandenes, unkontrollierbares, etwas unbestimmtes. Genau wie bei einem Menschen: Aus einer Zelle wächst ein Mensch, dessen Verhalten wir im Detail nur schwer vorhersagen können. Immerhin besitzt sein Gehirn 1011 Elemente (Zellen). Wenn also diese dynamischen sozialen Prozesse zu höherer Komplexität führen, müssen wir auch mehr Unbestimmtheit erwarten. Es bleibt zu Hoffen, dass die Unbestimmtheit nicht existenzielle Grundlagen betrifft. Was die Komplexität der Technik angeht, so versucht man hier im Gegensatz zu den gesellschaftlichen Unsicherheiten die Unsicherheiten zu erfassen und gezielt mit ihnen umzugehen. Das gilt für alle Bereiche, ob nun Naturgefahrenmanagement, beim Bau und Betrieb von Kernkraftwerken, im Bauwesen oder in der Schifffahrt. Und so verschieden diese Fachgebiete auch scheinen mögen, die an diesem Symposium teilnehmen: Sie haben erkannt, das verantwortungsvoller Umgang mit Technik einer Berücksichtigung der Unbestimmtheit bedarf. Soweit sind wir in gesellschaftlichen Prozessen noch nicht. Wünschenswert wäre, dass in einigen Jahren nicht nur Bauingenieure, Maschinenbauer, Mathematiker oder Schiffsbauer an einem solchen Probabilistik- Symposium teilnehmen, sondern auch Soziologen, Politiker oder Manager... (aus dem Vorwort) --- HINWEIS: Das Volltextdokument besteht aus einzelnen Beiträgen mit separater Seitenzählung. / PREFACE: The world today is shaped by high dynamics. Multitude of processes evolves parallel and partly connected invisible. For example, the globalisation is such a process. Here one can observe the exponential growing of connections form the level of single humans to the level of cultures. Such connections guide as to the term complexity. Complexity is often understood as product of the number of elements and the amount of connections in the system. In other words, the world is going more complex, if the connections increase. Complexity itself is a term for a system, which is not fully understood, which is partly uncontrollable and indeterminated: exactly as humans. Growing from a single cell, the humans will show latter a behaviour, which we can not predict in detail. After all, the human brain consists of 1011 elements (cells). If the social dynamical processes yield to more complexity, we have to accept more indetermination. Well, one has to hope, that such an indetermination does not affect the basic of human existence. If we look at the field of technology, we can detect, that here indetermination or uncertainty is often be dealt with explicitly. This is valid for natural risk management, for nuclear engineering, civil engineering or for the design of ships. And so different the fields are which contribute to this symposium for all is valid: People working in this field have realised, that a responsible usage of technology requires consideration of indetermination and uncertainty. This level is not yet reached in the social sciences. It is the wish of the organisers of this symposium, that not only civil engineers, mechanical engineers, mathematicians, ship builders take part in this symposium, but also sociologists, managers and even politicians. Therefore there is still a great opportunity to grow for this symposium. Indetermination does not have to be negative: it can also be seen as chance.

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Glass is being increasingly used as a structural material. In particular, its favourable aesthetic qualities have made it popular with modern designers. The most recent developments have seen glass being used as major structural elements such as beams and columns. From the engineering viewpoint these new applications present a series of design problems which need to be addressed before a coherent and safe design philosophy can be achieved. To date there has been much work on out-of-plane loading of glass, and in-plane loading of traditional materials is well described. However, there is little published advice on design for long term, in-plane loading of glass. In reality engineers have been borrowing design concepts from the two former areas to try and satisfy the latter. In this thesis it is demonstrated that this is not satisfactory, and a new “Crack Size Design” method is proposed. Novel contact and fracture mechanics techniques are developed in the course of this thesis, which may also be applied to more general engineering problems. Of particular interest is the evaluation of the stress intensity factors for closed edge cracks in a half plane, and a description of their growth in a bulk compressive stress field. These techniques are used in an investigation of contact loading. Contact stresses are particularly important to glass design as glass is unable to flow plastically to relieve high local stresses. Hence “soft” interlayers are often inserted between the glass and the contacting material to facilitate stress redistribution. The problem of a rigid, square-ended punch loading glass via a perfectly linear elastic or rigid plastic interlayer is analysed. The results for an edge crack under such loading conditions are then investigated and incorporated into the newly derived Crack Size Design philosophy.

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This thesis investigates the application of Kriging meta-modelling techniques in the field of building design and optimisation. In conducting this research, there were two key motivational factors. The first is the need for building designers to have tools that allow low energy buildings to be designed in a fast and efficient manner. The second motivating factor is the need for optimisation tools that account, or help account, for the wide variety of uses that a building might have; so-called Robust Optimisation (RO). This thesis therefore includes an analysis of Kriging meta-modelling and first applies this to simple building problems. I then use this simple building model to determine the effect of the updated UK Test Reference Years (TRYs) on energy consumption. Second, I examine Kriging-based optimisation techniques for a single objective. I then revisit the single-building meta-model to examine the effect of uncertainty on a neighbourhood of buildings and compare the results to the output of a brute-force analysis of a full building simulator. The results show that the Kriging emulation is an effective tool for creating a meta-model of a building. The subsequent use in the analysis of the effect of TRYs on building shows that UK buildings are likely to use less heating in the future but are likely to overheat more. In the final two chapters I use the techniques developed to create a robust building optimisation algorithm as well as using Kriging to improve the optimisation efficiency of the well-known NSGA-II algorithm. I show that the Kriging-based robust optimiser effectively finds more robust solutions than traditional global optimisation. I also show that Kriging techniques can be used to augment NSGA-II so that it finds more diverse solutions to some types of multi-objective optimisation problems. The results show that Kriging has significant potential in this field and I reveal many potential areas of future research. This thesis shows how a Kriging-enhanced NSGA-II multi-objective optimisation algorithm can be used to improve the performance of NSGA-II. This new algorithm has been shown to speed up the convergence of some multi-objective optimisation algorithms significantly. Although further work is required to verify the results for a wider variety of building applications, the initial results are promising.

This work presents the development of a three-dimensional lattice material model for wood and its application to timber joints including the potential strengthening benefit of second order effects. A lattice of discrete elements was used to capture the heterogeneity and fracture behaviour and the model results compared to tested Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) specimens. Despite the general applicability of lattice models to timber, they are computationally demanding, due to the nonlinear solution and large number of degrees of freedom required. Ways to reduce the computational costs are investigated. Timber joints fail due to plastic deformation of the steel fastener(s), embedment, or brittle fracture of the timber. Lattice models, contrary to other modelling approaches such as continuum finite elements, have the advantage to take into account brittle fracture, crack development and material heterogeneity by assigning certain strength and stiffness properties to individual elements. Furthermore, plastic hardening is considered to simulate timber embedment. The lattice is an arrangement of longitudinal, lateral and diagonal link elements with a tri-linear load-displacement relation. The lattice is used in areas with high stress gradients and normal continuum elements are used elsewhere. Heterogeneity was accounted for by creating an artificial growth ring structure and density profile upon which the mean strength and stiffness properties were adjusted. Solution algorithms, such as Newton-Raphson, encounter problems with discrete elements for which 'snap-back' in the global load-displacement curves would occur. Thus, a specialised solution algorithm, developed by Jirasek and Bazant, was adopted to create a bespoke FE code in MATLAB that can handle the jagged behaviour of the load displacement response, and extended to account for plastic deformation. The model's input parameters were calibrated by determining the elastic stiffness from literature values and adjusting the strength, post-yield and heterogeneity parameters of lattice elements to match the load-displacement from laboratory tests under various loading conditions. Although problems with the modified solution algorithm were encountered, results of the model show the potential of lattice models to be used as a tool to predict load-displacement curves and fracture patterns of timber specimens.