Response quantities of mechanical systems, e.g. Buildings with inexplicably quantifiable natural influences such as earthquakes or wind loads play an increasingly important role in the field of civil engineering worldwide. Utilizing simulation models for structures in combination with models for natural phenomena, statements for the reliability of, for example, a building are to be given for underlying systems. This topic is generally summarized under the term reliability analysis. These analysis methods can both provide statements about the safety of buildings as well as modeling the temporal change of the system. Using this information, statements about the future can be derived. The Probability Density Evolution Method (PDEM), by Li and Chen (2004), allows to model time-dependent stochastic mechanical systems. In the master thesis, this modern method was used in combination with the subset simulation (SuS) of Au and Beck (2001) to give statements about systems that are on the rather unlikely edge of a response behavior. On the one hand this should allow to discover particularly critical parameter configurations of the input variables or of the system and on the other hand to find a deeper connection between system response and parameter configuration. Marius Bittner developed a software framework to implement the calculation methods and first tests.
The foundation, established in 1994, was founded on the initiative of university professor Dr.-Ing. Victor Rizkallah, who taught at Leibniz Universität Hannover from 1978 to 2001. The award goes to young scientists of the Leibniz Universität Hannover for special and practical scientific achievements in the fields of engineering, natural sciences and economics, mathematics and computer science as well as in the fields of philosophy, history and social sciences. (Further information (in german) here)
