Assessment of the time-dependent structural reliability of buried water mains

The structural performance of civil engineering constructions is assessed by comparing its state behaviour as a function of time to one of several limit states. The method presented is based essentially on the analysis of interference data and evaluates current and future structural reliability using a multidimensional time dependent failure surface. It takes into account the stochastic nature and the variation in time of past and future loads, and the randomness in strength due to degradation resulting from different environmental stressors. This methodology has been implemented in the case of grey cast-iron buried water pipes. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.