Abstract: The response surface method (RSM) with uniform design is widely used for current structural reliability analysis of multi-dimensional variables. However, it has the limitation of fitting the regression models in the original quasi-linear least squares (LS) method. To deal with this limitation, a new approach—the partial least squares (PLS) method based on the traditional method is proposed for improvement. However, the quasi-linear regression method restricts the form of the model, thus the improvement in accuracy is limited and the result is unstable. So, this paper presents a partial least squares regression model to substitute the quasi-linear model for the calculation of reliability, which not only handles the correlation between the variables but also avoids the pre-assumptions for the form of the regression model. The results of several examples show that the method proposed in this paper can be used effectively to analyze structural reliability, especially in multi-dimensional and non-linear cases, and higher accuracy can be obtained as shown by comparing the results with those from the least squares regression method.

Key words: partial least squares method, response surface method, spline transform, uniform design, structural reliability