Assessment of Reliability of Aging Reinforced Concrete Structures
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 126, Issue 12
Abstract
Aggressive environment and in-service loading can cause the resistance degradation of existing reinforced concrete structures. They must be considered for the safety evaluation and service-life prediction of deteriorating structures. This paper presents an integrated approach for time-dependent system reliability analysis considering the stochastic nature of load processes, uncertainties in strength, degradation initiation time, and strength degradation mode. The approach takes into account the partial correlation among the failures of structural elements, which arises from the fact that elements of a structural system are subjected to the same load processes and/or dependent on some common basic random variables. The approach is efficient, since it does not require simulation. Analysis results obtained by using the proposed approach indicate that the reliability of series systems is relatively insensitive to the correlation between the failure of structural elements. However, the reliability of parallel system is highly sensitive to the correlation. The use of the time-dependent reliability obtained by neglecting possible correlation as a safety measure, therefore, should be avoided.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 126 • Issue 12 • December 2000
Pages: 1458 - 1465
History
Received: Oct 25, 1999
Published online: Dec 1, 2000
Published in print: Dec 2000
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