NORMALIZED FAILURE COST AS A MEASURE OF A STRUCTURE IMPORTANCE

Important structures such as nuclear power plants must have higher rel iability against failure due to natural hazards than other structures. The appropriate design load level or the target reliability should be discussed in an engineering context to reach a consensus acceptable t o society. Once an optimum reliability formulation is decided, the rel iability is determined by a failure cost estimate. This paper proposes a normalized failure cost approach as a basis for discussion. Numeric al examples are also described.