Reliability-based calibration of the slenderness limit of concrete columns reinforced with GFRP bars for CSA S6 and CSA S806

Abstract

The design provisions for internal glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) reinforced concrete (RC) columns have been recently under consideration by design committees in Canada and around the world due to new advancements in understanding the behavior of GFRP-RC columns. The slenderness limit is a critical design parameter differentiating between the first- and second-order analyses of GFRP-RC columns. The existing slenderness limits in design standards were calibrated using deterministic approaches. In this study, a novel reliability-based approach was utilized to quantify the reliability index associated with the slenderness limit to calibrate and propose optimized reliability-based slenderness limits for CSA S806 and CSA S6, for the first time. The method takes the advantage of artificial intelligence and incorporates a comprehensive experimental database.