On the complicated or implicit limit state functions in the reliability problems

a response surface method for reliability computation based on Support Vector Regression (SVR) is presented. A fit of the limit state function is constructed by this method. The partial derivatives of the fit could be easily computed and further be used to calculate the reliability through the ordinary first or second order reliability method. Firstly

the required training samples by Latin Hypercube sampling are generated in this paper. Secondly

the substituted function of the limit state function is obtained using the SVR. Thirdly

the reliability index and failure probability are calculated by the ordinary gradient optimization method. Results of the numerical examples justify the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed method

which provides a new approach for the reliability computation.