Stochastic evaluation of the damage length in RC beams submitted to corrosion of reinforcing steel

Abstract

The influence of spatial variability of parameters appearing in a model of concrete carbonation (and resulting rebars corrosion) is studied. For this purpose, random fields are introduced in order to represent the input parameters of the model. The concept of damage length is defined as the portion of a beam structure for which a durability failure criterion is attained. Analytical derivations inspired from time-variant reliability methods lead to tractable formulæ for the mean and standard deviation of the damage length. Results are validated using Monte Carlo simulation (MLS) of both the input random fields (after proper discretization) and the resulting damage length. The histogram of the damage length, which is obtained as a byproduct of the MCS, is finally commented.

Keywords:

• Extent of damage
• Ageing indicator
• Rebars corrosion
• Time-variant reliability
• PHI2 method
• Space-variant reliability