ABSTRACT
In a review on first-order second-moment reliability methods, USACE (1999) rightly noted that a potential problem with both the Taylor’s series method and the point estimatemethod is their lack of invariance for nonlinear performance functions. The document suggested the more general Hasofer-Lind reliability index (Hasofer and Lind, 1974) as a better alternative, but conceded that “many published analyses of geotechnical problems have not used the Hasofer-Lind method, probably due to its complexity, especially for implicit functions such as those in slope stability analysis,” and that “the most common method used in Corps practice is the Taylor’s series method, based on a Taylor’s series expansion of the performance function about the expected values.”
