Reliability-informed probabilistic analysis of corroded RC structure

Under the marine atmospheric environment, reinforced concrete (RC) structures are subjected to chloride-induced corrosion, which could lead to financial loss and bring a huge challenge to the life-cycle design and maintenance. In this paper, a spatial deterioration model is developed for the corroded RC beam under marine environment by considering the scenarios of changing climate and the random filed of physical parameters (e.g., chloride transport coefficient and corrosion current density). Karhunen-Loève (KL) expansion is adopted to conduct simulation of the random field. An illustrative example of flexural RC beam under marine atmospheric environment is assessed to present the output and verify the feasibility of the developed method. Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) is employed to compute the probability distribution of ultimate bending capacity. Meanwhile, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to assess the influences of different factors (e.g., compressive strength of concrete and yield strength of steel bar) on ultimate bending capacity. Also, reliability analysis is conducted to study the influences of spatial effects on time-dependent failure probability.