Probabilistic service life of reinforced concrete structures with randomly distributed corrosion-induced cracks

This paper proposed a probabilistic service life prediction method for reinforced concrete (RC) structures with randomly distributed chloride corrosion-induced cracking. In the proposed method, spatial randomness of environmental, geometric and physical factors was considered that influence corrosion process and crack propagation of RC structures at the material level. Karhunen-Loeve (KL) expansion method was utilised for modelling the spatial random fields. Four limit state functions were proposed based on four deterioration events (corrosion initiation, surface crack initiation, modulus degradation and exceedance of repair limit). Then, time-dependent reliability analyses of an RC bridge slab were conducted using the proposed method. Finally, sensitivity analysis of the statistical parameters including mean, variance, correlation length as well as the truncation number for KL expansion method were conducted to determine the effects of those parameters to the service life.