Estimation of the Reliability of Plastic Slabs

In this thesis, work related to fundamental conditions has been extended to non-fundamental or the general case of probabilistic analysis. Finally, using the ss-unzipping technique a door has been opened to system reliability analysis of plastic slabs. An attempt has been made in this thesis to give a probabilistic treatment of plastic slabs which is parallel to the deterministic and systematic treatment of plastic slabs by Nielsen (3). The fundamental reason is that in Nielsen (3) the treatment is based on a deterministic modelling of the basic material properties for the reinforced and the concrete but in this thesis these material properties are modelled by stochastic variables.

The probabilistic analysis performed in this thesis is mainly based on work by Thoft-Christensen & Baker (9) and Thoft-Christensen & Murotsu (10). Since considerable information about these basic materials used in reinforced concrete slabs and the loading is available it is highly probable that other aspects of slab failure, i.e. the punching shear failure and buckling failure, can be included in the probabilistic approach.