Effects of concrete quality control on the reliability assessment of reinforced concrete columns

ABSTRACT Knowing the behavior of concrete as a structural material, accurately quantifying its properties, presents itself as a major task to ensure the reliability of structures. As the control of material properties in the construction works increases around the world, the cases of non-compliant concrete are also growing. Materials in which one or more design specifications are not met are defined as non-compliant concrete. In general, the issue of non-compliance results from the non-fulfillment of the compressive strength, since this is the property most commonly tested within the control process. Among the possible causes of failure, there is the influence exerted by test procedures, including the possible differences between results coming from different laboratories. Based on the analysis presented in Magalhães et al. [1], the present work studies the influence of the results of concrete quality control coming from different test sites, on the evaluation of the structural reliability of columns of usual reinforced concrete buildings, designed according to the standard code NBR 6118 [2]. A computer model based on the finite element method determines the bearing capacity of the structural element. The structural safety is assessed by the value of the reliability index, which is calculated by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that different test sites can lead to high variations in the evaluation of structural safety levels.