Semester projects
Project proposals Fall Semester 2024
The following is a list of proposals for semester projects offered at the Chair of Risk, Safety and Uncertainty Quantification. To enquire about conducting a project at the Chair, please directly contact the responsible supervisor.
Optimization of truss structures
Supervisor: M. Moustapha
Optimization is a major task in the design of structures where the analyst seeks to reduce the cost while ensuring that some performance criteria are met.
Many approaches have been developed in the literature depending on whether uncertainties are directly accounted for in the design process or not. The goal of this project is to perform a comparative study of various methods for deterministic and reliability-based design optimization (respectively DDO and RBDO).
In this project, students will design a truss structure using Abaqus as main case study. They will then proceed to optimize this structure in various configurations using UQLab, the Chair’s Matlab platform for uncertainty quantification.
Prerequisites: At least one of the following two courses
Additional information
- Group work: Yes (2)
Active learning reliability analysis
Supervisor: M. Moustapha
Structural reliability aims at assessing the reliability of a system by evaluating the probability of failure, i.e., the probability that the system fails to fulfil some performance requirements due to uncertainties in the system itself and its environment.
Active learning reliability is the most efficient method for assessing reliability. It relies on an inexpensive surrogate of the limit-state function built by evaluating the original limit-state over a carefully selected set of design points. The latter are sequentially identified using a so-called learning function.
In this project, the student(s) will benchmark recent learning functions in the literature and implement the most promising ones. They will then compare their performance against the ones currently available in UQLab, the chair's platform for uncertainty quantification.
Prerequisites (at least one)
Additional information
- Group work: Yes (2)
Python-based structural design tool
Supervisor: S. Schär
Hand calculation based structural design is still widespread in Civil Engineering practice. This prohibits the use of advanced computational models and makes the design procedure prone to human error.
In this project, the student will extend an existing python-based structural design tool for simple beam structures. The focus of the project lies on improving the interface of the ex-isting design tool and extending its design capabilities.
The implementation of the tool will be done with Jupyter Notebook and Python. The goal is to provide a tool that can be used in practical applications later on.
Prerequisites
- Vertiefung Konstruktion
Additional information
- Group work: Yes (2)
Leja sequences and experimental design for PCE
Supervisor: N. Lüthen
Polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) are a popular surrogate modelling method in the field of uncertainty quantification. The surrogate is constructed based on a limited number of evaluations of the original expensive model (experimental design). In order to construct a reliable surrogate, it is essential to use an informative set of training points.
The goal of this semester project is to implement the recently proposed experimental design method of Leja sequences using the UQ software UQLab, to investigate its potential for surrogate modeling, and to compare its performance to other established experimental design methods.
Prerequisites:
- Uncertainty Quantification in Engineering
- Basic knowledge of MATLAB programming
Additional information:
- Group work: No
Nonparametric estimation of pair copulas
Supervisor: N. Lüthen
In Uncertainty Quantification, it is important to take dependence between input parameters into account, because failing to do so can result in wrong answers to uncertainty analyses. A powerful tool for modeling dependence is the so-called copula theory. Originating from finance, there are many parametric copula families available, however they are not always suitable for engineering data.
The goal of this project is to implement a non-parametric pair copula in MATLAB. This includes a literature review as well as a benchmark of the new copula's performance compared to parametric pair copulas on engineering data sets.
Prerequisites:
- Uncertainty Quantification in Engineering
- Basic knowledge of MATLAB programming
Additional information:
- Group work: No
Past projects
The following is a list of past semester projects conducted at the Chair.
- Philip Schnabel, Polynomial chaos expansion for dependent inputs, 2022
- Prijanthy Panchadcharam, Extension of python-based design tool, 2021
- Raphael Sieber, Optimization of truss structures, 2021
- Matthias Schneider, Python-based structural design tool, 2021
- Pietro Parisi, Meta-ensembling: Ensemble methods for metamodelling, 2020
- Riccardo Arrigoni, Partial least squares for polynomial chaos expansions, 2019
- Marco Zumstein & Raphael Fässler, Python-based structural design tool - concrete design, 2019
- Minxiang Gao, Reliability-based design optimization of truss structures using surrogate models, 2019
- Lukas Bachmann & Alexander Hammett, Python-based structural design tool - Jupyter notebook, 2019
- Urias Morf & Mingpeng Zhu, Python-based structural design tool - FE code, 2019
- Andrin Kapser, Weighted average Monte Carlo simulation for reliability analysis, 2018
- Elena Giacomazzi, Directional importance sampling method for reliability analysis, 2018
- Viviane Rogenmoser, Reliability-based design optimization of truss structures, 2018
- Florian Schmid, Line sampling for reliability analysis, 2017
- Jochen Rieger & Stephane Tobler, Optimization of truss structures, 2017
- Kleio Sampatakaki, Asymptotic sampling for reliability analysis, 2017
- Matthias Reutimann, Calibration of partial safety factors for assessing the durability of concrete structures, 2015
- Raphael Wegmann, Reliability Analysis with Subset Simulation, 2015
- Charel Eicher, Reliability analysis of ten-story reinforced-concrete building, 2014
- Dimitrios Piskas, Kriging estimation methods for structural reliability, 2013