Reliability Evaluation of RC Columns

Abstract

This paper presents an approach for the reliability analysis of the RC columns considering the correlation between the axial load and bending moment or the uncertainty in the load eccentricity. The reliability analysis is based on the efficient first-order reliability method and uses the inverse normal transformation to deal with the modeling error that depends on the load eccentricity. The proposed approach is more efficient than the ones used in the literature for the reliability analysis of the RC columns because it does not require the use of the simulation techniques and the distribution fitting methods. The approach is used to study the sensitivity of the reliability of the short RC columns to the uncertainty in the eccentricities of the dead and live loads. Numerical results suggest that the reliability of the RC columns, in many cases, is sensitive to the correlation between the axial load and bending moment. By ignoring the correlation between the axial load and the bending moment or the uncertainty in the load eccentricity, the design according to the Canadian Standard Association design code may not be reliability consistent.