Global Approximation of Response Surfaces and Application to Design Sensitivity Analysis

An approach based on global approximations to obtain response surfaces of structural systems is presented. The response surfaces are then used to evaluate the sensitivity of the system by considering the global behavior of the system response when the design parameters vary within a bounded region. The formulation of the method is based on the determination of approximated response surfaces, which are computed by minimizing a residual function over the design space. Different coefficients of sensitivity are introduced to measure the global variability of the system response. A numerical example is considered in order to show the usefulness of this technique. Great insight into the behavior of the system can be gained using this methodology. Finally, some extensions of the present work are presented.