A reliability approach to landing pier optimum repair level

Concrete structures had been regarded as permanent structures, with their major advantage being their low maintenance, for many years. This may still be true in mild environments if materials are properly selected and if execution is carefully carried our. However; it has been observed in recent years that many concrete structures are suffering deterioration for various reasons. A probabilistic method to decide the optimum repair level is introduced using the deterioration of concrete structures model in this paper: The parameters involved in the model are expected to vary extensively since the phenomenon lakes place in the natural environment. They are determined based on past inspection data on landing piers, along with reliability theory. Hence, we focus on landing piers which are comprised of reinforced concrete slabs and steel piles, in which the slabs are the target of this study. A method is developed based on a probabilistic approach to determine the proper deterioration level at which rehabilitation action needs to be taken. Example problems are presented to demonstrate the capability of the method.