Robustness analysis of structural systems considering accidental actions
Résumé
Robustness of structural systems to accidental loads (e.g., bomb blast, impact and fire) has gained recently the attention of researchers and stakeholders. Quantifying robustness of structural systems under uncertainty is a crucial issue. Eurocode EN 1991-1-7 considers identified and unidentified accidental actions and defines robustness as 'the ability of a structure to withstand events like fire, explosions, impact or the consequences of human error, without being damaged to an extent disproportionate to the original cause.' This paper presents a reliability-based framework for assessing robustness of structural systems. In this approach, robustness quantifies the impact of relatively small damage on major structural consequences. Since considering all failure paths may be computationally tricky for structures with a high degree of redundancy, stochastically dominant failure paths are identified by using the branch-and-bound method. The proposed approach is applied to quantify robustness of frame structures.