Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Model Uncertainty in Predicting Soil Nail Loads Using Default and Modified FHWA Simplified Methods

Huifen Liu, Liansheng Tang and Peiyuan Lin

Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2017, vol. 2017, 1-14

Abstract:

Accuracy evaluation of the default Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) simplified equation for prediction of maximum soil nail loads under working conditions is presented in this study using the maximum likelihood method and a large amount of measured lower and upper bound nail load data reported in the literature. Accuracy was quantitatively expressed as model bias where model bias is defined as the ratio of measured to predicted nail load. The maximum likelihood estimation was carried out assuming normal and lognormal distributions of bias. Analysis outcomes showed that, based on the collected data, the default FHWA simplified nail load equation is satisfactorily accurate on average and the spread in prediction accuracy expressed as the coefficient of variation of bias is about 30%, regardless of the distribution type. Empirical calibrations were proposed to the default FHWA simplified nail load equation for accuracy improvement. The Bayesian Information Criterion was adopted to perform a comparison of suitability between the competing normal and lognormal statistical models that were intended for description of model bias. Example of reliability-based design of soil nail walls against internal pullout limit state of nails is provided in the end to demonstrate the benefit of performing model calibration and using calibrated model for design of soil nails.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/MPE/2017/7901918.pdf (application/pdf)
http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/MPE/2017/7901918.xml (text/xml)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hin:jnlmpe:7901918

DOI: 10.1155/2017/7901918

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Mathematical Problems in Engineering from Hindawi
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mohamed Abdelhakeem ().