Reliability of reinforced concrete structures using stochastic finite elements

In this paper, special emphasis is given to uncertainties in the evaluation of the structural behavior, looking for a better representation of the system characteristics and quantification of the significance of these uncertainties in structural design. The reliability analysis of reinforced concrete structures is performed taking into account the spatial variability of material properties. The finite element method is used to analyze reinforced concrete structures. A multidimensional non-Gaussian stochastic field generation model (independent of the finite element mesh) is developed and used. The reliability analysis is carried out employing the first order reliability method Numerical examples are presented to study how to generate correlated non-Gaussian stochastic fields and determine the reliability of a reinforced concrete structure with respect to a limit state function.