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Probabilistic durability assessment of concrete structures in marine environments: Reliability and sensitivity analysis

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Abstract

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 non-normal 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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Disaster Prevention and Structural Safety of the Ministry of Education, China, School of Civil Engineering & Architecture, Guangxi University, Nanning, 530004, China

    Bo Yu

  2. Shanghai Institute of Disaster Prevention and Relief, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Chao-lie Ning

  3. Natural Hazard Research Centre (NHRC), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Bing Li

Authors
  1. Bo Yu
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  2. Chao-lie Ning
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  3. Bing Li
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Correspondence to Bing Li.

Additional information

Foundation item: This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51168003, 51368006 and 51478125), the Major Project of Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 2012GXNSFEA053002), Program for Distinguished Scholars and High-Level Innovative Research Team of Guangxi Higher Education (Grant No. GJR-2013-38), and the Guangxi Science and Technology Development Program (Grant No. 1377001-11).

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Yu, B., Ning, Cl. & Li, B. Probabilistic durability assessment of concrete structures in marine environments: Reliability and sensitivity analysis. China Ocean Eng 31, 63–73 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13344-017-0008-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13344-017-0008-3

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