Reliability based economic evaluation of structures considering the life term

The reliability based economic evaluation of structures is usually carried out to minimize the expected total life cost of structures, including initial cost Ci and and failure cost pfCf. The minimization is performed using the principle of minimum total cost. But the expected total loss cost which is to be minimized lacks consideration of serviceability or life term of structures. In this paper, interest rates are considered into the evaluation of expected total loss cost in order to translate the cost of failure to present worth for comparison with the initial cost. In order to calculate the expectation of reliability during the life term of structures, a safety reduction function is also proposed.