Spatial Probability of Corrosion in RC Structures Conditional on Measurements

摘要

Measurements and monitoring are commonly applied to reduce the uncertainty associated with deterioration in reinforced concrete (RC) structures. Because the information obtained from these measurements is commonly uncertain or indirect, Bayesian updating should be utilized to determine the condition of the structure conditional on this information. Additionally, due to the scale of concrete structures, the spatial variability of the deterioration processes should be accounted for. In this paper, a recently developed method for reliability updating (Straub D., Probabilistic Engineering Mechanics, under review) is investigated for Bayesian updating of spatially distributed deterioration in RC structures. The method is combined with a simple but robust importance sampling technique. Its application is demonstrated on numerical examples considering structures subject to corrosion of the reinforcement due to chloride ingress, for which measurements of chloride concentrations are available.