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Nowadays, numerical simulations enable the description of mechanical problems in many application fields, e.g. in soil or solid mechanics. During the process of physical and computational modeling, a lot of theoretical model approaches and geometrical approximations are sources of errors. These can be distinguished into aleatoric (e.g. model parameters) and epistemic (e.g. numerical approximation) uncertainties. In order to get access to a risk assessment, these uncertainties and errors must be captured and quantified. For this aim a new priority program SPP 1886 has been installed by the DFG which focuses on the so called polymorphic uncertainty quantification. In our subproject, which is part of the SPP 1886 (sp12), the focus is driven on quantification and assessment of polymorphic uncertainties in computational simulations of earth structures, especially for fluid-saturated soils. To describe the strongly coupled solid-fluid response behavior, the theory of porous media (TPM) will be used and prepared within the framework of the finite element method (FEM) for the numerical solution of initial and boundary value problems [2,3]. To capture the impacts of different uncertainties on computational results, two promising approaches of analytical and stochastic sensitivity analysis will enhance the deterministic structural analysis [6][7][8].A simple consolidation problem already provided a high sensitivity in the computational results towards variation of material parameters and initial values. The variational and probabilistic sensitivity analyses enable to quantify these sensitivities. The variational sensitivities are used as a tool for optimization procedures and capture the impact of different parameters as continuous functions. An advantage is the accurate approximation of the solution space and the efficient computation time, a disadvantage lies in the analytical derivation and algorithmic implementation. In the probabilistic sensitivity analysis from the field of statistics, the expense only increases proportionally to the problems dimension. Instead of a constant value, the model parameters are defined as probability distribution, which provides random values. Thus, a set of solution data is built up by several cycles of the simulation. Different approaches of the Bayes statistics will enable to receive accurate information with just a few simulations. The overall objective is the development of more efficient methods and tools for the sizing of earth structures in the long-run.

In this contribution, several case studies with data uncertainties are presented which have been performed in individual projects as part of the DFG (German Research Foundation) Priority Programme SPP 1886 “Polymorphic uncertainty modelling for the numerical design of structures.” In all case studies numerical models with uncertainties are derived from engineering problems describing concepts for handling and incorporating measurement data, either of model input parameters or of the system response. The first case study deals with polymorphic uncertain data based on computer tomographic scans with respect to air voids which are acquired, simplified and integrated in numerical models of adhesive bonds. In the second case study, the variation sensitivity analysis is presented to provide suitable prior knowledge for numerical soil analyses, for example, in order to reduce required input data. The uncertainty in friction processes is treated in case study 3 whereby measurement data are used in data driven methods to improve the numerical predictions. In case study 4, the failure behavior of die‐cast window hinges, which is affected by an uncertain initial pore distribution, is investigated by means of a Markov chain approach. In the last two case studies, mathematical methods of statistical inference and updating algorithms for uncertainty models are shown. Due to the heterogeneous spectrum of problems, a generalized strategy for data modeling, acquisition, and assimilation is developed and applied on each case study.

Modeling of mechanical systems with uncertainties is extremely challenging and requires a careful analysis of a huge amount of data. Both, probabilistic modeling and nonprobabilistic modeling require either an extremely large ensemble of samples or the introduction of additional dimensions to the problem, thus, resulting also in an enormous computational cost growth. No matter whether the Monte‐Carlo sampling or Smolyak's sparse grids are used, which may theoretically overcome the curse of dimensionality, the system evaluation must be performed at least hundreds of times. This becomes possible only by using reduced order modeling and surrogate modeling. Moreover, special approximation techniques are needed to analyze the input data and to produce a parametric model of the system's uncertainties. In this paper, we describe the main challenges of approximation of uncertain data, order reduction, and surrogate modeling specifically for problems involving polymorphic uncertainty. Thereby some examples are presented to illustrate the challenges and solution methods.

To account for the natural variability of material parameters in multiphasic and hydro‐mechanical coupled finite element analyses of soil and earth structure applications, the use of probabilistic methods may be effective. Here, selecting the appropriate soil auto‐correlation functions for random field realizations plays an essential role. In a joint study, the general influence of auto‐correlation lengths on the results of strongly coupled models is determined. Subsequently, a polymorphic approach using fuzzy probability based random fields is used to capture the solution space for fuzzy auto‐correlation lengths. To adequately describe the behavior of the soil the theory of porous media is implemented, which uses a homogenization approach for the multiple phases on the soil microstructure. Its foundations and the differentiated methods used for the polymorphic uncertainty quantification are explained in this contribution. Based on two representative examples, the requirements and advantages of a polymorphic uncertainty model are worked out30.