COMPUTATION OF THE FAILURE PROBABILITY OF DETERIORATING STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS

Structural system deterioration is one of the least attended topics in time-dependent structural reliability analysis. There are basically t wo types of problems in structural deterioration analysis; one is the need for models to simulate the behaviour of deteriorating structural material. This will be done through case by case study in this paper. The other problem is that when both the applied loads and resistance v ary with time, the current methods to generate limit state functions f or the structural system need validating. To avoid this problem, an al ternative formulation for time-dependent reliability is proposed, wher e the reliability analysis of a deteriorating structural system is bas ed on the reliability of its structural members, which constitute a fa ilure sequence For the structure. The advantage of the proposed approa ch is that it has effectively obviated the use of global limit state f unctions and that it is applicable to structures subject to various ty pes of loads and with different structural material properties. An app lication example is given to illustrate the computation procedure.