Wind fragility analysis of RC chimney with temperature effects by dual response surface method

Abstract

Wind fragility analysis (WFA) of concrete chimney is often executed disregarding temperature effects. But combined wind and temperature effect is the most critical limit state to define the safety of a chimney. Hence, in this study, WFA of a 70 m tall RC chimney for combined wind and temperature effects is explored. The wind force time-history is generated by spectral representation method. The safety of chimney is assessed considering limit states of stress failure in concrete and steel. A moving-least-squares method based dual response surface method (DRSM) procedure is proposed in WFA to alleviate huge computational time requirement by the conventional direct Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) approach. The DRSM captures the record-to-record variation of wind force time-histories and uncertainty in system parameters. The proposed DRSM approach yields fragility curves which are in close conformity with the most accurate direct MCS approach within substantially less computational time. In this regard, the error by the single-level RSM and least-squares method based DRSM can be easily noted. The WFA results indicate that over temperature difference of 150°C, the temperature stress is so pronounced that the probability of failure is very high even at 30 m/s wind speed. However, below 100°C, wind governs the design.