Component and system reliability analysis of nonlinear reinforced concrete grids with multiple failure modes

The bending moment redistribution is an inherent behavior in reinforced concrete grids, which increases the number of possible critical cross-sections susceptible to reach a limit state. Despite the fact that its influence could be important, the high number of failure cross-sections is not often considered in reinforced concrete reliability analyses. In this paper, a local approach of reliability analysis applied to grid structures is developed by taking into account the dominant failure modes. This approach is based on random sampling coupled with finite element analysis, through the use of a localized response surface technique. A mode selection strategy has been developed to capture the individual failure modes in order to classify their importance in the global system reliability. For large-scale systems, this procedure intends to reduce the global computational time in the reliability analysis. Numerical applications aim to show the effect of internal force redistribution, as well as the efficiency of the proposed approach and the interest of considering multiple failure modes.