Reliability study of behaviour

Department of Structures

Probabilistic optimization of the design of industrial buildings

Under the project APVV-51-024505 „Probabilistic design of structures subjected to effects of snow loads“, an optimisation study of the design of light-roof industrial buildings has been carried out – Figure 1. The data on climatic loads at representative meteorological station in Germany have been used. Figure 2 shows that the design using standardised partial factors g yields unsufficient reliability expressed by the values of the reliability index b less than its target value bt = 3.8. By probabilistic optimisation of partial factors, a close to the uniform target reliability has been achieved – Figure 3. The results as well as several failures of industrial buildings in the Middle Europe occuring during the winter 2005/2006 suggest, that higher values of partial factors of climatic loads should be implemented.

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Figure 1. Representative frames of industrial buildings.

 

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Figure 2. Reliability of buildings when designed by the standardised partial factors Y.

 

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Figure 3. Reliability of buildings when designed by the optimised partial factors Y.