• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 1990.10a
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• pp.41-44
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• 1990

There is the need to balance safety, economy and serviceability in all phases of society proboems. This is especially true in structural code formulation, where a framework is established by which practicing structural enginers can be assured of designing structures that reasonably meet the above three objectives. The existeing design codes, which are generally based on the structural theory and certain engineering experience, do not realistically consider the uncertainties of loads and resistances and the basic reliability concepts. The purpose of the present study is therefore to develop the realistic reliablility-based design criteria to secure adequate safety and reliability, and to derive the models for partial and combined resistance factor formats.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.111-128
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• 2014

The stochastic response surface method (SRSM) and the response surface method (RSM) are often used for structural reliability analysis, especially for reliability problems with implicit performance functions. This paper aims to compare these two methods in terms of fitting the performance function, accuracy and efficiency in estimating probability of failure as well as statistical moments of system output response. The computational procedures of two response surface methods are briefly introduced first. Then their capabilities are demonstrated and compared in detail through two examples. The results indicate that the probability of failure mainly reflects the accuracy of the response surface function (RSF) fitting the performance function in the vicinity of the design point, while the statistical moments of system output response reflect the accuracy of the RSF fitting the performance function in the entire space. In addition, the performance function can be well fitted by the SRSM with an optimal order polynomial chaos expansion both in the entire physical and in the independent standard normal spaces. However, it can be only well fitted by the RSM in the vicinity of the design point. For reliability problems involving random variables with approximate normal distributions, such as normal, lognormal, and Gumbel Max distributions, both the probability of failure and statistical moments of system output response can be accurately estimated by the SRSM, whereas the RSM can only produce the probability of failure with a reasonable accuracy.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.149-165
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• 2016

Floods have been known to be one of the main causes of bridge collapse. Contrary to earthquakes, flood events tend to occur repeatedly and more frequently in rainfall areas; flood-induced damage and collapse account for a significant portion of disasters in many countries. Nevertheless, in contrast to extensive research on the seismic fragility analysis for civil infrastructure, relatively little attention has been devoted to the flood-related fragility. The present study proposes a novel methodology for deriving flood fragility curves for bridges. Fragility curves are generally derived by means of structural reliability analysis, and structural failure modes are defined as excessive demands of the displacement ductility of a bridge under increased water pressure resulting from debris accumulation and structural deterioration, which are known to be the primary causes of bridge failures during flood events. Since these bridge failure modes need to be analyzed through sophisticated structural analysis, flood fragility curve derivation that would require repeated finite element analyses may take a long time. To calculate the probability of flood-induced failure of bridges efficiently, in the proposed framework, the first order reliability method (FORM) is employed for reducing the required number of finite element analyses. In addition, two software packages specialized for reliability analysis and finite element analysis, FERUM (Finite Element Reliability Using MATLAB) and ABAQUS, are coupled so that they can exchange their inputs and outputs during structural reliability analysis, and a Python-based interface for FERUM and ABAQUS is newly developed to effectively coordinate the fragility analysis. The proposed framework of flood fragility analysis is applied to an actual reinforced concrete bridge in South Korea to demonstrate the detailed procedure of the approach.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.41-50
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• 2003

Nondestructive Damage Evaluation (NDE) techniques yield the damage location and its size from the modal characteristics of pre-damaged and post-damaged structures. To predict the system reliability of the aging structure, results from the NDE are integrated into the element/component failure probabilities. The element/component failure probabilities can be calculated from failure functions for each element/component with the aid of techniques from a structural reliability analysis. In this paper, a method to estimate the system reliability of a structure that is based on the reliabilities of elements/components in a given structure is presented. The efficacy of the combination of the nondestructive damage detection and the structural reliability evaluation is demonstrated using pre-damaged and post-damaged modal data obtained from numerical simulations of a rigid frame.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.973-988
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• 2014

This paper presents a factor-analysis based questionnaire categorization method to improve the reliability of the evaluation of working conditions without influencing the completeness of the questionnaire both in Taiwanese and Chinese construction enterprises for structural engineering applications. The proposed approach springs from the AI application and expert systems in structural engineering. Questions with a similar response pattern are grouped into or categorized as one factor. Questions that form a single factor usually have higher reliability than the entire questionnaire, especially in the case when the questionnaire is complex and inconsistent. By classifying questions based on the meanings of the words used in them and the responded scores, reliability could be increased. The principle for classification was that 90% of the questions in the same classified group must satisfy the proposed classification rule and consequently the lowest one was 92%. The results show that the question classification method could improve the reliability of the questionnaires for at least 0.7. Compared to the question deletion method using SPSS, 75% of the questions left were verified the same as the results obtained by applying the classification method.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.519-526
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• 2020

Non-stationary random seismic response and reliability of multi-degree of freedom hysteretic structure system are studied based on the cumulative damage failure mechanism. First, dynamic Eqs. of multi-degree of freedom hysteretic structure system under earthquake action are established. Secondly, the random seismic response of a multi-degree freedom hysteretic structure system is investigated by the combination of virtual excitation and precise integration. Finally, according to the damage state level of structural, the different damage state probability of high-rise frame structure is calculated based on the boundary value of the cumulative damage index in the seismic intensity earthquake area. The results show that under the same earthquake intensity and the same floor quality and stiffness, the lower the floor is, the greater the damage probability of the building structure is; if the structural floor stiffness changes abruptly, the weak layer will be formed, and the cumulative damage probability will be the largest, and the reliability index will be relatively small. Meanwhile, with the increase of fortification intensity, the reliability of three-level structure fortification is also significantly reduced. This method can solve the problem of non-stationary random seismic response and reliability of high-rise buildings, and it has high efficiency and practicability. It is instructive for structural performance design and estimating the age of the structure.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.69 no.4
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• pp.399-405
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• 2019

The present study assessed the reliability-based reinforcement ratio of FRP reinforced concrete structure applying recycled coarse aggregate (RCA) concrete. The statistical characteristics of FRP bars and RCA concrete were investigated from the previous literatures and the mean value and standard deviation were employed for the reliability analysis. The statistics can be regarded as the material uncertainty for configuring the probability distribution model. The target bridge structure is the railway bridge with double T-beam section. The replacement ratios of RCA were 0%, 30%, 50%, and 100%. From the probability distribution analysis, the reliability-based reinforcement ratios of FRP bars were assessed with four cases according to the replacement ratio of RCA. The reinforcement ratio of FRP bars at RCA 100% showed about 17.3% higher than the RCA 0%, where the compressive strength at RCA 100% decreased up to 27.5% than RCA 0%. It was found that the decreased effect of the compressive strength of RCA concrete could be compensated with increase of the reinforcement ratio of FRP bars. This relationship obtained by the reliability analysis can be utilized as a useful information in structural design for FRP bar reinforced concrete structures applying RCA concrete.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.125-131
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• 2021

For the vibration reliability tests, the jigs for mounting the test specimen on a vibration reliability tester are required. The dynamic stabilities of the jigs should be verified before the tests for obtaining the accurate reliability of the test specimen. This paper proposes an analytical technology for ensuring the dynamic structural stability for the test setup including the jig. The technology includes the mode analyses for checking resonance, the harmonic analyses for evaluating the dynamic structural stability of test setup including the jig, and the fatigue analyses for obtaining the durable reliability time with calculating the life cycles at the area of weakness. The cause investigation of the damaged jig during vibration reliability test of a rubber hose and the design of new revised jig are performed by using the technology. The vibration reliability test for the rubber hose with the new revised jig by analysis results is successfully conducted without any problem. Therefore the jig's design technology proposed in this paper may be useful for other items as well.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.80 no.6
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• pp.677-688
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• 2021

The building design codes and standards in many countries usually are either fully or partially adopted from the international codes. However, regional conditions like the quality of construction industry and different statistical parameters of load and resistance have essential roles in the code calibration of building design codes. This paper presents a probabilistic approach to assess the reliability level of adopted national building codes by simulating design situations and considering all load combinations. The impact of the uncertainty of wind and earthquake loads, which are entirely regional condition dependent and have a high degree of uncertainty, are quantified. In this study, the design situation is modeled by generating thousands of numbers for load effect ratios, and the reliability level of steel elements for all load combinations and different load ratios is established and compared to the target reliability. This approach is applied to the Iranian structural steel code as a case study. The results indicate that the Iranian structural steel code lacks safety in some load combinations, such as gravity and earthquake load combinations, and is conservative for other load combinations. The present procedure can be applied to the assessment of the reliability level of other national codes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.80 no.6
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• pp.711-726
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• 2021

This paper presents a multiple parameters-based recursive methodology for the reliability quantification of civil structures subjected to meteorological disasters. Recognizing the challenge associated with characterizing at a single stroke all the meteorological disasters that may hit a structure during its service life, the proposed methodology by contrast features a multiparameter recursive mechanism to describe the meteorological demand of the structure. The benefit of the arrangements is that the essentially inevitable deviation of the practically observed meteorological data from those in the existing model can be mitigated in an adaptive manner. In particular, the implications of potential climate change to the relevant reliability of civil structures are allowed for. The application of the formulated methodology of recursive reliability quantification is illustrated by first considering the reliability quantification of a linear shear frame against simulated strong wind loads. A parametric study is engaged in this application to examine the effect of some hyperparameters in the configured hierarchical model. Further, the application is extended to a nonlinear hysteretic shear frame involving some field-observed cyclone data, and the incompleteness of the relevant structural diagnosis data that may arise in reality is taken into account. Also investigated is another application scenario where the reliability of a building envelope is assessed under hailstone impacts, and the emphasis is to demonstrate the recursive incorporation of newly obtained meteorological data.