Question

3. An earth retaining wall with a design life of 50 years is planned for a site where high-intensity earthquakes may occur with a return period of 100 years. A geotechnical engineer has decided that the wall is to be designed to have a 0.99 probability that it will not suffer damage within its design life. Assuming damage between earthquakes are statistically independent, answer the following questions.
(a) What is the probability the wall will be damaged under a single earthquake if the occurrence of high-intensity earthquakes at the site can be modeled as a Bernoulli sequence?
(b) Using the answer to part (a), what is the probability the wall will be damaged in the next 20 years if the occurrences of high-intensity earthquakes can be modeled as a Poisson process?

Answer 1