Upper-Bound Estimate of the Reliability of Plastic Slabs

This paper gives a brief presentation of some recent results on probabilistic analysis of plastic slabs, especially reinforced concrete slabs. The estimate of the reliability of such slabs is based on the yield line approach by which upper bounds for the load-carrying capacity, and therefore also upper bounds for the reliability, are obtained. In general, it is much more complicated to obtain lower bounds. Since the membrane effect is not in general included in the analysis experiments show that the upper-bound solution for practical applications is actually a safe solution.