Reliability of deteriorating structures

Abstract A method is presented to assess the reliability of structures considering the deterioration of the resistance due to environmental effects (random loading and fatigue corrosion). For modeling the deterioration effects probabilistic fracture mechanical methods are applied. This concept allows the determination of the influence of various parameters (e.g. initial crack length, material toughness etc.) which is not feasible with the more traditional fatigue analysis (S-N curves). The results of the present study show that the initial surface quality (crack length) influences the reliability significantly when less ductile steels are used. As a result, quantitative information for an acceptable initial crack size distribution with regard to application of a high quality (but less ductile) steel can be obtained.