Reliability Assessment of Steel-Concrete Composite Beams considering Metal Corrosion Effects

Abstract

Steel-concrete composite (SCC) beams have been widely used in civil engineering and industrial structures. This kind of structure has some advantages such as fast fabrication time and optimized weight. However, designers are often concerned about the initial reliability, while over time the structural reliability will be reduced, especially due to metal corrosion. The objective of the paper is to assess the structural reliability of corroded SCC beams, in which the input parameters are considered as random variables. The SCC beam has been designed according to Eurocode-4 (EC-4), in which input parameters consist of cross-sectional dimensions of the beam, material properties, and applied loads. The effects of the random input variables on the reliability of structures are evaluated by sensitivity analyses, which are calculated by the global sensitivity analysis using Sobol’s method and Monte Carlo simulation. The developed reliability analysis algorithm in this study is verified with previous studies, highlighting the capability of the used method. Four different corrosion levels, which are pristine, 10-year, 20-year, and 50-year, are considered in the sensitivity analyses of the SCC beam. Finally, a series of first-order and total-order Sobol’s indices are obtained for measuring the sensitivity of input parameters with four corrosion levels.