An enhanced uniform simulation approach coupled with SVR for efficient structural reliability analysis

•Robust scaling formulation for EMCS and fixed sample region for UIS.•Quasi-linear training interval and fixed hyperparameter for SVR.•High efficiency and robust SRA method by EUIS coupled with SVR. For structural reliability analysis with low failure probability, traditional simulation methods are time consuming approaches, which is a great challenge for estimating the failure probability. In this paper, a novel hybrid enhanced sampling method named as enhanced uniform importance sampling coupled with support vector regression (EUIS-SVR) is proposed. In EUIS-SVR, the samples are simulated by inter-cell with a lower assumed failure interval compared to traditional uniform importance sampling method. Then by approximating a general failure scaling formula, a quasi-linear interval is selected for estimating the failure probability using support vector regression model. Six numerical and engineering cases are studied for showing the abilities for accuracy and efficiency of proposed method compared to simulation reliability methods. The proposed EUIS-SVR method was found more efficient than existing simulation methods. [Display omitted]