Non linear probabilistic analysis of reinforced concrete structures

Abstract

When evaluating the behaviour of a reinforced concrete structures it is, in many situations, desirable to develop a non linear numerical analysis, due to the non linearity of the behaviour of existent materials. On other way, and in order to consider the uncertainty of main parameters, probabilistic techniques should be also introduced on such kind of analysis, leading so to a full probabilistic non linear analysis. This analysis is divided on following steps: 1) Develop a numerical model; 2) Execute a sensitivity analysis to identify critical structural parameters; 3) Determine a random distribution function and correlation coefficient between each parameter; 3) Develop a full probabilistic non linear analysis; 4) Determine the probabilistic density function for both numerical and experimental results; 5) Calculate approximation index (θ), which relates the proximity of both results. In this paper this analyses is realized using SARA platform, which is a combination of software ATENA (non linear structural analysis software) [1] and FREET (reliability analysis software) [2, 3].