Reliability based structural design

According to ISO 2394, structures shall be designed, constructed and maintained in such a way that they are suited for their use during the design working life in an economic way. To fulfil this requirement one needs insight into the risk and reliability under expected and non-expected actions. A key role in this respect is played by the structural reliability analysis (SRA). In this paper the present state of the art will be summarised, including the simplifications to semi-probabilistic calculations as being used in daily practice. Although in principle the adopted Bayesian reliability approach should be able to take care of all uncertainties involved, present practice still uses other safety concepts like Robustness Design and Quality Assurance as tools for achieving the safety objectives of design and assessment. © 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, London.