Probabilistic Durability Assessment of Concrete Structures in Marine Environments： Reliability and Sensitivity Analysis

• Published in: China ocean engineering Vol. 31; no. 1; pp. 63 - 73
• Main Authors: Yu, Bo, Ning, Chao-lie, Li, Bing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nanjing Chinese Ocean Engineering Society 01.03.2017; Springer Nature B.V; Key Laboratory of Disaster Prevention and Structural Safety of the Ministry of Education, China, School of Civil Engineering & Architecture, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China%Shanghai Institute of Disaster Prevention and Relief, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China%Natural Hazard Research Centre(NHRC), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798
• Subjects: Age factors; Algorithms; Chlorides; Coastal Sciences; Concrete; Concrete structures; Decision making; Diffusion coefficient; Durability; Dye dispersion; Engineering; Environmental conditions; Fluid- and Aerodynamics; Frameworks; Limit states; Maintenance; Marine & Freshwater Sciences; Marine environment; Material properties; Mathematical models; Monte Carlo simulation; Numerical and Computational Physics; Oceanography; Offshore Engineering; Offshore structures; Parameter sensitivity; Parameters; Physical properties; Probabilistic models; Random variables; Reliability; Reliability analysis; Reliability aspects; Reliability engineering; Sensitivity analysis; Simulation; Statistical methods; Structural reliability; Time dependence; Toughness; 一阶可靠性方法; 二阶可靠性方法; 概率模型; 海洋环境; 混凝土结构; 灵敏度分析; 耐久性评估; 非正态随机变量; concrete; chloride; corrosion; sensitivity; durability; reliability
• ISSN: 0890-5487; 2191-8945
• DOI: 10.1007/s13344-017-0008-3

A probabilistic framework for durability assessment of concrete structures in marine environments was proposed in terms of reliability and sensitivity analysis, which takes into account the uncertainties under the environmental,material, structural and executional conditions. A time-dependent probabilistic model of chloride ingress was established first to consider the variations in various governing parameters, such as the chloride concentration,chloride diffusion coefficient, and age factor. Then the Nataf transformation was adopted to transform the nonnormal random variables from the original physical space into the independent standard Normal space. After that the durability limit state function and its gradient vector with respect to the original physical parameters were derived analytically, based on which the first-order reliability method was adopted to analyze the time-dependent reliability and parametric sensitivity of concrete structures in marine environments. The accuracy of the proposed method was verified by comparing with the second-order reliability method and the Monte Carlo simulation. Finally, the influences of environmental conditions, material properties, structural parameters and execution conditions on the time-dependent reliability of concrete structures in marine environments were also investigated. The proposed probabilistic framework can be implemented in the decision-making algorithm for the maintenance and repair of deteriorating concrete structures in marine environments.