Time-dependent reliability analysis of existing RC structures in a marine environment using hazard associated with airborne chlorides

In the design of reinforced concrete (RC) structures in a marine environment, it is important to consider the effects of this environment on structural long-term performance. In this paper, a time-dependent structural reliability analysis method taking the hazard associated with airborne chlorides into consideration is proposed. Also, a procedure to obtain the failure probabilities of RC structures in a marine environment updated by the Sequential Monte Carlo Simulation (SMCS) is indicated. In this procedure, the corrosion crack width and chloride concentration distribution by coring test are used as observational data. For illustrative purposes, time-dependent reliability analyses are presented for one-way RC slabs in a marine environment. Using SMCS. multiple random variables related to observation information can be updated simultaneously. This is realized by taking into consideration the joint probability density functions of the random variables. The effects of various marine environments, inspection results, and number of inspections on the updated estimates of an RC slab reliability are discussed in this paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.