Abstract:
In structural construction practice, it happens frequently that the same construction factors such as materials, machines and workers may be used in different construction stages. Concerning this realistic property, in this paper, segmental parameters are used to account for the distribution of a correlated random field. In addition, estimation system is rebuilt to contain all the uncertain segmental parameters for importing the correlation information into the estimation formula. Finally, a sequential estimation formula based on maximum a posteriori criteria is proposed to estimate the mean values and standard deviations of the uncertain segmental parameters. Numerical examples are presented to show that the proposed formula can be used not only for updating the segmental parameters existing in current substructure, but also for predicting the segmental parameters appearing in later substructure, which both can play instructive roles in construction simulation and control.