Influence of membrane action on robustness indicators and a global resistance factor design

When a continuous concrete slab is excessively loaded or a certain support is lost due to an accidental event, membrane action can be activated in order to generate an alternative load transfer to the remaining supports, which can considerably enhance the load-carrying capacity. This can delay or even prevent a progressive collapse, increase the structural reliability of components and consequently increase the robustness of concrete structures. Currently, only limited research has been focusing on tensile membrane action, and therefore a novel real-scale test set-up has been developed in order to assess these actions in real-scale concrete plates. Considering the experimental findings and validated numerical modelling, the influence of tensile membrane action on the structural reliability of concrete slabs is quantified. Probabilistic models for the most important basic variables are gathered and the structural reliability is assessed using Latin Hypercube sampling. The framework and first results as proposed in this contribution are consequently used as input for quantifying the robustness of structural systems through some common robustness indicators. Further, a global resistance factor is derived based on the results of the Latin Hypercube simulations and the obtained design values are compared