Reliability Assessment of Corroding Steel Structures Using Imprecise Probability

摘要

Evaluating the behaviour of steel structures subject to atmospheric corrosion is complicated by the inherent uncertainties in the corrosion process.Theoretically, these uncertainties can be modelled using a probabilistic approach.However, there are practical difficulties in identifying the probabilistic model for the deterioration process as the actual corrosion data are rather limited.Also, the dependences between different random variables are often ignored.This paper proposes a probabilistic analysis framework for modelling the atmospheric corrosion of steel structures with incomplete information.The framework is based on the theory of imprecise probability and copula.An example is presented to illustrate the methodology.The role of epistemic uncertainties on structural reliability is investigated through the example.