Abstract
Abstract. Snow avalanches are a threat to many kinds of elements (human beings, communication axes, structures, etc.) in mountain regions. For risk evaluation, the vulnerability assessment of civil engineering structures such as buildings and dwellings exposed to avalanches still needs to be improved. This paper presents an approach to determine the fragility curves associated with reinforced concrete (RC) structures loaded by typical avalanche pressures and provides quantitative results for different geometrical configurations. First, several mechanical limit states of the RC wall are defined using classical engineering approaches (Eurocode 2), and the pressure of structure collapse is calculated from the usual yield line theory. Next, the fragility curve is evaluated as a function of avalanche loading using a Monte Carlo approach, and sensitivity studies (Sobol indices) are conducted to estimate the respective weight of the RC wall model inputs. Finally, fragility curves and relevant indicators such a their mean and fragility range are proposed for the different structure boundary conditions analyzed. The influence of the input distributions on the fragility curves is investigated. This shows the wider fragility range and/or the slight shift in the median that has to be considered when a possible slight change in mean/standard deviation/inter-variable correlation and/or the non-Gaussian nature of the input distributions is accounted for.
Highlights
The increasing urban development in mountainous areas means that issues associated with rockfalls, landslides and avalanches need to be addressed (Naaim et al, 2010)
As reinforced concrete (RC) is the most usual material used to build structures exposed to potential avalanche loadings, we focus on this technology
The Ultimate limit state (ULS), Accidental limit state (ALS) and YLT fragility curves are defined on a range from 22.7 kPa to 218.6 kPa
Summary
The increasing urban development in mountainous areas means that issues associated with rockfalls, landslides and avalanches need to be addressed (Naaim et al, 2010). Prospective human casualties and physical civil engineering structures damages are of concern for snow avalanche risk management. Depending on the external loading applied to the structure, that is to say the natural hazard considered (rockfall, landslide, earthquake, etc.), the physical vulnerability of civil engineering structures is usually assessed differently depending on the nature of the failure modes involved. Avalanche risk mapping is often carried out by combining probabilistic avalanche hazard quantification (e.g., Keylock, 2005; Eckert et al, 2010) and vulnerability (deterministic framework) or fragility (probabilistic framework) relations to assess individual risk for people (Arnalds et al, 2004) and buildings (Cappabianca et al, 2008). A better definition of vulnerability or fragility relations remains a challenge for the improvement of the integrated framework of avalanche risk assessment (Eckert et al, 2012)
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