A CASE-STUDY ON THE RELIABILITY-ANALYSIS OF DETERIORATING STRUCTURES

This paper presents a case study on the reliability analysis of deteri orating reinforced concrete structures where the deterioration of stru ctural (material) resistance is caused by the corrosion of reinforcing steel under a specific environment. There are basically two types of problem in structural deterioration analysis. One problem is the need for models to simulate the behaviour of deteriorating structural mater ial. This will be done through case by case study herein. The other pr oblem is that when both the applied loads and resistance vary with tim e, the current methods to generate limit state functions for the struc tural system needs validating. To avoid this problem, an alternative f ormulation for time-dependent reliability is proposed, where the relia bility analysis of a deteriorating structural system is based on the r eliability of its structural components, which constitute a failure se quence for the structure. The advantage of the proposed approach is th at it has effectively obviated the use of global limit state functions and that it is applicable to structures subject to various types of l oad and with different structural material properties, An example is g iven for illustration.