Reliability analysis of RC slabs with or without FRP strengthening to blast loads

With a rise in blast attacks on structures in recent years there is a desire to increase the blast resistance of many types of existing structures. Studies of using fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composites to strengthen RC structures to resist blast loads have been reported. The general conclusions are that the blast loading resistance capacities of RC structures strengthened with FRP are enhanced. Previous studies also developed empirical relations to construct P-I curves of RC slabs without or with FRP strengthening. This study performs reliability analysis, taking into account the randomly varying blast loads and structural parameters, to calculate probabilities of failure of reinforced concrete slabs and observe the effectiveness of the FRP strengthening. P-I curves with a damage criterion based on support rotation are used to generate the limit state function for reliability analysis. Variations of the blast loadings and structure parameters are taken as normally distributed with mean and variances acquired from literature. From the numerical results, the effectiveness of the FRP strengthening on RC slabs is examined