How Reliable is the Durability of RC Structures?

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to show some trends and time profiles of the reliability index relevant to the Serviceability Limit State considering the design service life of RC structures. The interactive web page “RC_LifeTime” – originated by the authors – is used (see http://www.stm.fce.vutbr.cz/). The depassivation of reinforcing steel due to carbonation is considered conservatively as a limiting condition. It is based on model concrete carbonation with 12 random input variables; the Latin Hypercube Sampling simulation method is used. RC_LifeTime offers the following options: Service Life Assessment – a statistical evaluation of service life, where optionally the target value of reliability index ß may be an additional input value and then the corresponding service life is the output value; Concrete Cover Assessment – a statistical evaluation of concrete cover value for the target service life, where optionally the required concrete cover value may be input in this case and the relevant reliability index ß describes the reliability of reinforcement depassivation.

Keywords

• carbonation depth
• concrete cover
• durability
• RC structures
• reliability index