Life cycle reliability assessment of reinforced concrete beams shear‐strengthened with carbon fiber reinforced polymer strips in accordance with fib bulletin 14

Abstract

The results of time‐variant reliability analysis of shear‐strengthened reinforced concrete (RC) beams with externally bonded fiber‐reinforced polymer (FRP) are presented with an emphasis on the effects of environmental harshness and effective design parameters. The effects of chloride‐induced pitting corrosion and FRP degradation are considered using Monte Carlo simulation to assess the influence of environmental deterioration on the fib 2001 limit states instead of applying design reduction factors. For the defined worked example, the proposed method specifies the remaining lifetime of the strengthened beam by considering a reasonable value for the target reliability index. With regard to the reliability index profiles, it is shown that chloride‐induced pitting corrosion has a greater effect on the shear capacity of strengthened beams than the degradation of the FRP. It was found that the FRP reinforcement ratio has a considerable effect on the governing failure mode; hence, it is important to calibrate the proposed safety verifications of fib bulletin 14 using sufficient experimental data for the relevant random variables in a reliability‐based context.