Robustness Analysis of a Timber Structure with Ductile Behaviour in Compression

This paper presents a probabilistic approach for structural robustness assessment for a timber structure built a few years ago. The robustness analysis is based on a structural reliability based framework for robustness assessment. The complex timber structure with a large number of failure modes is modelled by only a few dominant failure modes. A component based robustness analysis is performed based on reliability indices of remaining elements after assumed failure of selected critical elements. Two different approaches are used; first failure of elements is assumed to be brittle and second where material ductility of timber is taken into account. The robustness is expressed and evaluated by a robustness index.This paper presents a probabilistic approach for structural robustness assessment for a timber structure built a few years ago. The robustness analysis is based on a structural reliability based framework for robustness assessment. The complex timber structure with a large number of failure modes is modelled by only a few dominant failure modes. A component based robustness analysis is performed based on reliability indices of remaining elements after assumed failure of selected critical elements. Two different approaches are used; first failure of elements is assumed to be brittle and second where material ductility of timber is taken into account. The robustness is expressed and evaluated by a robustness index