ABSTRACT

The trend in civil engineering today, more than ever before, is toward providing economical designs at specified levels of safety. Often these objectives necessitate a prediction of the performance of a system for which there exists little or no previous experience. Current design procedures, which are generally learned only after many trial-and-error iterations, lacking precedence, often fall short of expectations in new or alien situations. In addition, there is an increasing awareness that the raw data, on which problem solutions are based, themselves exhibit significant variability. It is the aim of this presentation to demonstrate how concepts of probability analysis may be used to supplement the geotechnical engineer’s judgment in such matters.