Development And Application Of Reliability Assessment Software For Existing Building Structures

The necessity of the assessment software development is discussed for the problems discovered in the inspection and assessment industry. As there is still no available engineering software in the market, currently engineers have to apply the design software to assess the existing building structures. However, the practical effect is not very ideal and the demand of reliability assessment can not be satisfied. So, it is useful to specially devise a set of assessment software to confirm the assessment and enhance its efficiency.The REliability Assessment Software for Existing building Structures (REASES) is developed based on the characteristics of existing building structures. The essential theory of structural reliability assessment is to compare the structural responses under various effects with their corresponding limit values according the reliability conditions, so as to assess the capability of structural safety, serviceability, and durability. The structural responses under various effects can be obtained by computation or inspection, while the limit values are stipulated in the national and local criteria. With the guide of the theory, the primary version of REASES is formally completed following the basic target. REASES including the preprocessor, kernel computation and processor, can be used to assess the reliability for existing reinforced concrete frame structures, and all data in REASES are preformed on the base of database. REASES has good interface and powerful processor corresponding with engineers. Besides, REASES adds several simulation modules parallel, in order to perform the time history analysis and the collapse simulation for reinforced concrete frame structures under 3-dimesional seismic actions.In application research, a 3-dimesional frame model is computed first, and the results computed by REASES are compared one by one with those computed by other programs or by hand so as to ensure the preciseness of its algorithm. Secondly, it shows that REASES is competent to assess existing building structures, by performing reliability assessment for a two-story frame workshop and generating an assessment report automatically. Finally, how to deal with practical problems probably encountered in engineering by REASES is introduced to show that the application of REASES is very wide. All in all, the service procedure is convenient and available. REASES is able to solve practical problems pertinently and exert its grand energy while assessing an existing building structure.