01363740

Component

Target levels of reliability for civil engineering designs are normally established as a matter of policy by specification committees or agency leadership. Target values are generally selected with some balance of consideration among perceived costs in a general sense, the consequences of failure, as well as general historical performance information. Deliberations regarding target levels of reliability seldom explicitly consider the incremental costs that are required to increase the reliability of structures and seldom involve explicit calculations to guide or inform such decisions. An approach to establish target levels of reliability for design of bridge foundations at both strength and serviceability limit states is presented in this paper. The approach combines consideration of “socially acceptable” risk with economic considerations that seek to minimize the total cost associated with the foundations. Socially acceptable risk is generally represented through so-called F-N curves, which describe socially acceptable relations between frequency of failure (F) and the consequences of failure (N), or some other undesired consequence. The economic optimization involves minimization of total foundation costs through evaluation of the costs of potential consequences of failure and incremental costs required to increase the reliability of the foundations.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFS30 Foundations of Bridges and Other Structures

01362476

12-4327

English

18p

2012

Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References

Bridge design; Bridge foundations; Economic analysis; Economic and social factors; Failure; Life cycle costing; Load and resistance factor design; Optimization; Risk assessment

Reliability index

Bridges and other structures; Design; Economics; Highways; I10: Economics and Administration; I24: Design of Bridges and Retaining Walls

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2012 Paper #12-4327

PRP, TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2012 5:23PM