Department of Structural Reliability

CZ/11/LLP-LdV/TOI/134005

Vocational Training in Assessment of Existing Structures

The project addresses the urgent need for implementing principles of the assessment and verification of existing structures in practice in the Czech Republic and other partner countries. The project is supported by the Czech Chamber of Chartered Engineers (ČKAIT). The project consortium, under the leadership of the Klokner Institute of the Czech Technical University in Prague (KI CTU), consists of the Secondary Technical School of Civil Engineering (CZ) and the research institutions and universities from four EU Member States (DE, ES, IT, NL) and one associated country (TR).

TAČR TA01031314

Optimisation of Safety and Reliability for Existing Bridges

Project is focused on the development of methodology for assessment of safety and working life of bridges with respect to serviceability requirements, actual properties of structural materials and adverse environmental effects. Results of long-term monitoring of temperatures, traffic loads and their effects on bridges will contribute to achievement of new knowledge about traffic loads, adverse environment, material properties and bridge behaviour. Probabilistic optimisation will be applied for assessment of partial factors and target reliabilities. New technical requirements will be developed for assessment of safety and remaining working life of existing bridges.

Results

Software tools in Excel:
carbonization
data updating

Software tools in Mathcad:
optimization

If you are interested in these software tools, please contact assoc. prof. Jana Marková.

INGO LG11043

The project promotes international activities of the Klokner Institute CTU in Prague, concerning development of the methodology for reliability analysis and risk assessment of structures in persistent and accidental design situations. The project team participates in the international research within JCSS (Joint Committee for Structural Safety), particularly concerning the development of the Probabilistic Model Code. Advanced methods for structural verification including probabilistic methods and global resistance factor method for non-linear analyses are improved.

FRVS 2202/2010

The project promoted new principles and findings in Eurocodes, ISO standards, working materials of JCSS a professional literature particularly to university students. Students in master and Ph.D. study programmes as well as experts from practice were provided with new advanced methods for reliability analysis of concrete and masonry buildings and bridges.

Transfer of Innovations Provided in Eurocodes

The project addresses the urgent need for implementing principles of the assessment and verification of existing structures in practice in the Czech Republic and other European countries. Assessment of existing structures is an issue of great economic significance in most countries around the world, as more than 50 % of all construction activities concern existing buildings, bridges and other civil engineering works. Presently the Eurocodes which are being used in many CEN Member countries are primarily focused on the design of new structures. Additional operational rules for existing structures are still missing. The international standard ISO 13822 provides only general principles for the assessment of existing structures that should be further developed for their effective operational use in practice.

The project outcomes include vocational training materials based on the documents of the international research organization Joint Committee on Structural Safety JCSS and international research projects, selected outcomes of another project of the Leonardo da Vinci programme completed by five of the partners in 2008-2010, and also on the background documents to new European and international standards.

Available innovations are being adapted for needs of education and training of civil engineers, designers, technicians, teachers in technical schools, officers of public authorities, and also for students at secondary technical schools.

Robustness of Structures

Structural design and assessment of existing structures should consider extreme events including accidental impacts, gas explosions, fire, flooding and extreme climatic actions. Mostly, failures of structures exposed to the extreme events may hardly be completely prevented. However, consequences of the extreme event in case of sufficiently robust structures may be significantly reduced. Recent structural collapses in the Czech Republic and abroad indicate an urgent need for the development of methods for structural robustness assessment.

The project (2008?2011), based on multilateral collaboration amongst European research institutions involved in the COST Action TU0601, aims to improve the robustness assessment methods using recent scientific findings in the theory of reliability, risk analysis and probabilistic cost optimisation. Available informationcon­cerning response of structures under extreme events is critically reviewed and practical methods for the robustness assessment are developed taking into account conditions in the Czech Republic. Background information for national annexes and revisions of relevant EN Eurocodes will be provided to facilitate practical applications. Dissemination of achieved results will be accomplished through a seminar organised for practical engineers, by papers in professional journals, contributions at conferences and by software packages available on web sites of the project.

http://www.robustnost.cvut.cz