Dependence of pile reliability on load uncertainty

So as to address the main challenges of pile design, rationally, various methods of reliability analysis are reviewed briefly and comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation recommended as the most dependable approach to meeting these challenges. It is argued that use of variance reduction or importance sampling should be avoided. A brief review of the sensitivity of a pile design in sand to various soil and size uncertainties as well as to model choice is followed by results, discussion and conclusions of a study into the design dependency on loading uncertainty. Increase in load uncertainty is shown to cause a large reduction in axial capacity, specially in the probability of failure range of 10(-2) to 10(-4). Axial capacity becomes almost invariant at low probabilities of failure and it is recommended that the design probability of failure be restricted to less than or equal to 10(-4).