Showing papers in "Structural Safety in 2009"

TL;DR: In this article, the sources and characters of uncertainties in engineering modeling for risk and reliability analyses are discussed, and they are generally categorized as either aleatory or epistemic, if the modeler sees a possibility to reduce them by gathering more data or by refining models.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors considered the effect of structural component strength, stiffness, deformation capacity, and cyclic deterioration on the collapse risk of reinforced-concrete moment frame buildings, including both ductile and non-ductile frames.

TL;DR: In this article, the effect of cascading failures in the risk and reliability assessment of complex infrastructure systems is studied, and the authors suggest that topological changes are needed to increase cascading robustness at realistic tolerance levels.

TL;DR: In this article, the service life of reinforced concrete (RC) structures exposed to the marine environment conditions is predicted considering the crack effect on chloride penetration, and the relationship between diffusion coefficients and crack widths is predicted in the probabilistic framework of Monte Carlo Simulation.

TL;DR: In this paper, a probabilistic model for the deformation and shear force demands of reinforced concrete bridges subject to corrosion is developed by extending currently available models for pristine bridges with an additional model for time-dependent chloride-induced corrosion.

TL;DR: In this article, a spatial and time-dependent reliability model was developed for a RC beam subject to corrosion-induced pitting corrosion, for shear and flexural limit states.

TL;DR: In this article, a matrix-based system reliability (MSR) method is proposed to compute the probabilities of general system events efficiently by simple matrix operations, which is uniformly applicable to any type of system events including series, parallel, cut-set and link-set systems.

TL;DR: The goal has been to establish an accurate method for prediction of e.g. extreme wind speeds based on recorded data that seems to perform better than the POT and Gumbel methods, and it is applicable to nonstationary time series.

TL;DR: In this article, a seismic risk assessment of steel frame building structures that are typical of regions of low-to-moderate seismicity in the Central and Eastern United States and explores some of the implications for risk-informed evaluation of civil infrastructure.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed a Monte Carlo based method for estimating the reliability of structural systems by reformulating the reliability problem to depend on a parameter and exploiting the regularity of the failure probability as a function of this parameter.

TL;DR: In this paper, genetic algorithms are used to obtain solutions to the multi-objective optimization problems considering system reliability, redundancy, and life-cycle cost (LCC), and an approach to provide the optimization program the ability to optimally select what maintenance actions are applied and when they are applied.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors proposed a new model to assess the lifetime of RC structures subject to corrosion-fatigue deterioration processes, which is applied to the reliability analysis of bridge girders located in various chloride-contaminated environments.

TL;DR: In this article, a systematic probabilistic framework is presented for detailed estimation and optimization of the life-cycle cost of engineering systems for seismic risk mitigation using passive dissipative devices.

TL;DR: In this article, the influence of rebars corrosion on the seismic response of reinforced concrete structures is analyzed in terms of capacity curves and compared with the provisions of the Seismic European Code.

TL;DR: In this article, a low-discrepancy sampling method is proposed to improve the accuracy of the classical Monte Carlo (MC) method over purely random sampling, which shows great potential for improving the accuracy and efficiency of the MC-based simulation method for structural reliability analysis.

TL;DR: In this article, a nonlinear, time-stepping dynamic analysis is used to investigate the responses of relevance to the performance evaluation and the integration of the responses into measures of damage accumulated during the earthquake.

TL;DR: In this article, a probabilistic framework to estimate long-term earthquake-induced economical loss for woodframe structures was proposed and demonstrated in a simulation procedure, where two typical woodframe residential structures were examined in order to illustrate the concepts and methods.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors define PoD and PFA when damage and detection are stochastic fields or spatially dependent, and identify probability density functions on polynomial chaos.

TL;DR: In this article, a reliability analysis of a damaged Suezmax double hull tanker, using a first order reliability method, is presented, where the accidental grounding is assumed to be centered on the keel, which is the worst possible scenario from a strength degradation point of view.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors develop formal stochastic expected financial loss estimation models over the lifetime of the building due to mainshocks and their subsequent aftershock sequences, and incorporate the random aftershock losses into pre-mainshock financial loss estimations.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a methodology that can be used to make informed decisions on whether or not to retrofit structures for seismic events based on the expected economic benefit due to retrofitting.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors considered the problem of finding the set of actions that minimizes the expected (discounted) maintenance costs over both a finite horizon and an infinite horizon, and showed that the optimal maintenance decisions related to this problem are a solution of a continuous-time renewal-type dynamic programming equation.

TL;DR: In this article, a quantitative, semi-probabilistic approach for estimating the initial accidental damage and the survival of the damaged structure is presented. But the approach is based on an alternate path approach and does not account for nonlinear structural behaviour.

TL;DR: In this paper, Monte Carlo based reliability analysis with multi-objective design optimization using a response surface approach and its application to an earthquake engineering problem is presented, which involves conflicting objectives which can be resolved by applying a Pareto-type optimization approach.

TL;DR: In this article, high quality function approximations for each of the limit-state functions and the joint failure surface are developed to reduce the computational cost involved without loss of accuracy.

TL;DR: In this paper, a lifetime reliability-based approach to the optimization of reinforced concrete (RC) cross-sections in an aggressive environment is presented, which aims to minimize the material cost under a time-dependent constraint on the structural reliability.

TL;DR: In this article, a review of some decomposition techniques previously given by the authors to solve bi-level problems is presented within a unified formulation, and a new variant is investigated, and the proposed methods use standard optimization frameworks to obtain the reliability indices and to solve the global problem within a decomposition scheme.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare three methods for the implementation of response surfaces: a global approximation of a deterministic database, local interpolation of that database, or using artificial neural networks.

TL;DR: In this article, the renewal model for cost-benefit optimization including maintenance is presented, and three types of maintenance strategies are proposed, i.e. age-dependent maintenance, block maintenance and maintenance by inspection and (perfect) repair.