Perisa, Jelena

This masters thesis investigates how proof loadingcould be used to reassess the reliability level ofexisting bridges. When the resistance of the bridgeis greater than the applied proof load, the bridgeis considered to be safe and the test successful.The first part of this thesis presents modernstate-of-the-art assessments of previous work doneby different researchers. This is to give an overviewof the effort done to see how, when using reliabilityanalysis, the bridges can be safely designed so asto utilise their maximum capacity.The stochastic model is established in Chapter 3,with which the reliability analysis is carried outfor the generic limit state equation. The resultsare presented for EN 1990 standard CC2 and CC3consequence classes. Based on the sensitivity measures it was possible to determine which stochasticvariables could be updated in order to update thereliability level of existing bridge.Bayesian decision theory, introduced in Chapter 4,is used to update the reliability level of existingconcrete bridge based on proof loading. Theupdated failure probabilities and correspondingreliability indices indicated which proof load levelis required to obtain the sufficient reliability levelof structure.Future aspects were mentioned in Conclusion

Reliability updating of existing bridges based on proof loading

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