Multi-faced assessment of structural safety

• Published in: Archives of civil engineering 2021-01, Vol.67 (2), p.133-154
• Main Author: Woliński, Szczepan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Criteria; Decision theory; Design; Failure; Flexing; Fuzzy logic; fuzzy measures; Human error; Probability; qualitative information; Random variables; Reinforced concrete; Reliability engineering; Safety; State variable; Structural engineering; Structural reliability; Structural safety
• ISSN: 1230-2945; 2300-3103
• DOI: 10.24425/ace.2021.137159

Structural safety is a concept defined in various ways, usually in an imprecise and qualitative manner. The article refers to the more important concepts and methods of structural safety assessment and presents an original proposal for a multi-faced assessment of this feature. Suggested procedure allows to take into account most of the key properties determining the safety of structures, including reliability, risk, resistance and robustness, random and non-random uncertainty of state variables and assessment criteria, potential consequences of failure, and makes possible the visualization of the results. Using the concept of fuzzy numbers, fuzzy statistics and the approximate reasoning scheme it enable to take into account subjective and qualitative information about the state variables, safety criteria, computational method, the professional knowledge and intuition of the designer. The application of the proposed procedure is illustrated on the example of the safety assessment of a reinforced concrete beam designed for flexure. The proposed procedure may be useful at the stage of conceptual design of building structures, as well as for assessing the safety of existing structures.