arXiv subjects

Clement Gauchy

Publications and source records attributed to Clement Gauchy.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Reference prior for Bayesian estimation of seismic fragility curves

One of the key elements of probabilistic seismic risk assessment studies is the fragility curve, which represents the conditional probability of failure of a mechanical structure for a given scalar measure derived from seismic ground motion. For many structures of interest, estimating these curves is a daunting task because of the limited amount of data available; data which is only binary in our framework, i.e., only describing the structure as being in a failure or non-failure state. A large number of methods described in the literature tackle this challenging framework through parametric log-normal models. Bayesian approaches, on the other hand, allow model parameters to be learned more efficiently. However, the impact of the choice of the prior distribution on the posterior distribution cannot be readily neglected and, consequently, neither can its impact on any resulting estimation. This paper proposes a comprehensive study of this parametric Bayesian estimation problem for limited and binary data. Using the reference prior theory as a cornerstone, this study develops an objective approach to choosing the prior. This approach leads to the Jeffreys prior, which is derived for this problem for the first time. The posterior distribution is proven to be proper with the Jeffreys prior but improper with some traditional priors found in the literature. With the Jeffreys prior, the posterior distribution is also shown to vanish at the boundaries of the parameters' domain, which means that sampling the posterior distribution of the parameters does not result in anomalously small or large values. Therefore, the use of the Jeffreys prior does not result in degenerate fragility curves such as unit-step functions, and leads to more robust credibility intervals. The numerical results obtained from different case studies-including an industrial example-illustrate the theoretical predictions.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2022

Uncertainty quantification and global sensitivity analysis of seismic fragility curves using kriging

Seismic fragility curves have been introduced as key components of Seismic Probabilistic Risk Assessment studies. They express the probability of failure of mechanical structures conditional to a seismic intensity measure and must take into account the inherent uncertainties in such studies, the so-called epistemic uncertainties (i.e. coming from the uncertainty on the mechanical parameters of the structure) and the aleatory uncertainties (i.e. coming from the randomness of the seismic ground motions). For simulation-based approaches we propose a methodology to build and calibrate a Gaussian process surrogate model to estimate a family of non-parametric seismic fragility curves for a mechanical structure by propagating both the surrogate model uncertainty and the epistemic ones. Gaussian processes have indeed the main advantage to propose both a predictor and an assessment of the uncertainty of its predictions. In addition, we extend this methodology to sensitivity analysis. Global sensitivity indices such as aggregated Sobol indices and kernel-based indices are proposed to know how the uncertainty on the seismic fragility curves is apportioned according to each uncertain mechanical parameter. This comprehensive Uncertainty Quantification framework is finally applied to an industrial test case consisting in a part of a piping system of a Pressurized Water Reactor.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2022

Importance sampling based active learning for parametric seismic fragility curve estimation

The key elements of seismic probabilistic risk assessment studies are the fragility curves which express the probabilities of failure of structures conditional to a seismic intensity measure. A multitude of procedures is currently available to estimate these curves. For modeling-based approaches which may involve complex and expensive numerical models, the main challenge is to optimize the calls to the numerical codes to reduce the estimation costs. Adaptive techniques can be used for this purpose, but in doing so, taking into account the uncertainties of the estimates (via confidence intervals or ellipsoids related to the size of the samples used) is an arduous task because the samples are no longer independent and possibly not identically distributed. The main contribution of this work is to deal with this question in a mathematical and rigorous way. To this end, we propose and implement an active learning methodology based on adaptive importance sampling for parametric estimations of fragility curves. We prove some theoretical properties (consistency and asymptotic normality) for the estimator of interest. Moreover, we give a convergence criterion in order to use asymptotic confidence ellipsoids. Finally, the performances of the methodology are evaluated on analytical and industrial test cases of increasing complexity.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2020

An information geometry approach for robustness analysis in uncertainty quantification of computer codes

Robustness analysis is an emerging field in the domain of uncertainty quantification. It consists of analysing the response of a computer model with uncertain inputs to the perturbation of one or several of its input distributions. Thus, a practical robustness analysis methodology should rely on a coherent definition of a distribution perturbation. This paper addresses this issue by exposing a rigorous way of perturbing densities. The proposed methodology is based the Fisher distance on manifolds of probability distributions. A numerical method to calculate perturbed densities in practice is presented. This method comes from Lagrangian mechanics and consists of solving an ordinary differential equations system. This perturbation definition is then used to compute quantile-oriented robustness indices. The resulting Perturbed-Law based sensitivity Indices (PLI) are illustrated on several numerical models. This methodology is also applied to an industrial study (simulation of a loss of coolant accident in a nuclear reactor), where several tens of the model physical parameters are uncertain with limited knowledge concerning their distributions.

math.ST↗