Reliability-based geotechnical design

我们发现我们的结构的基础是所有工程材料中最可变和最不确定的之一，因此非常适合于概率处理。由于岩土工程师经常必须凑合使用一个工地的现有土地，因此，任何岩土设计的一个关键问题就是“我们应该如何设计我们的岩土系统，以达到可接受的安全水平？”这个问题还涉及到许多其他重要的问题，比如：我们如何才能减少对地面工程性质的不确定性？我们对自己的预测和设计模型有多大信心？我们应该如何调整我们的设计以考虑不同的失败后果？而且，最重要的是，应该如何实施设计规范，以解决所有这些问题，并仍然达到社会可接受的安全水平？

The ground on which we found our structures is one of the most variable and uncertain of all engineering materials and is therefore highly amenable to a probabilistic treatment. Since geotechnical engineers must often make do with the existing ground at a site, a key question in any geotechnical design then becomes "How should we design our geotechnical system so as to achieve an acceptable safety level?" The question involves a number of other important issues such as: How can we reduce our uncertainty about the ground's engineering properties? How confident are we in our prediction and design models? How should we adjust our designs to account for differing failure consequences? And, most importantly, how should design codes be implemented in order to address all of these issues and still arrive at societally acceptable levels of safety?