Universitätsbibliothek
Weimar Open Access

Polyhedral response surfaces for structural reliability assessment

Stability analysis for randomly imperfect structures

Dynamic testing for damage assessment as non-destructive method has attracted growing in-terest for systematic inspections and maintenance of civil engineering structures. In this con-text the paper presents the Stochastic Finite Element (SFE) Modeling of the static and dy-namic results of own four point bending experiments with R/C beams. The beams are dam-aged by an increasing load. Between the load levels the dynamic properties are determined. Calculated stiffness loss factors for the displacements and the natural frequencies show differ-ent histories. A FE Model for the beams is developed with a discrete crack formulation. Cor-related random fields are used for structural parameters stiffness and tension strength. The idea is to simulate different crack evolutions. The beams have the same design parameters, but because of the stochastic material properties their undamaged state isn't yet the same. As the structure is loaded a stochastic first crack occurs on the weakest place of the structure. The further crack evolution is also stochastic. These is a great advantage compared with de-terministic formulations. To reduce the computational effort of the Monte Carlo simulation of this nonlinear problem the Latin-Hypercube sampling technique is applied. From the results functions of mean value and standard deviation of displacements and frequencies are calcu-lated. Compared with the experimental results some qualitative phenomena are good de-scribed by the model. Differences occurs especially in the dynamic behavior of the higher load levels. Aim of the investigations is to assess the possibilities of dynamic testing under consideration of effects from stochastic material properties

SFE- Modelling of dynamic and static properties of R/C Beams in progressive damage