1 Objectives

Abstract

Complex deterministic systems under deterministic loading are generally analyzed by the finite element method. This is mainly due to the most versatile applicability of this method as well as the sophisticated solution algorithms available for purely deterministic analyses, see e.g. [37, 14, 66, 64, 16]. Quite frequently, however, neither the loading nor some structural parameters are deterministic quantities, i.e. they exhibit an inherent randomness and hence forcing also the response of the system to be an uncertain quantity. Deterministic analysis thus generally represents only an approximation of the actual reality, i.e. because of unavoidable uncertainties in the structural properties as well as in loading processes.