RANDOM NONLINEAR FINITE ELEMENT APPROACH FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF EXISTING REINFORCED CONCRETE STRUCTURES – SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT (RF-DYNA) AND APPLICATION TOWARDS MARINE STRUCTURES

Abstract

Exposed existing reinforced concrete structures, such as marine structures, commonly experience material degradation due to harsh environments and mechanical damage. This degradation magnifies the inherent variability of key material properties such as concrete compressive strength. Assessments of these structures often involve advanced numerical modelling techniques, such as finite element (FE) simulation, in order to predict structural capacity. Conservative material properties are often uniformly assigned to a medium. Ignoring the spatial variability of material properties may lead to inaccurate estimates of the capacity of existing reinforced concrete structures. The omission of spatially varying material properties in engineering practice can be attributed to 1) the time-consuming process to obtain experimental test data, and 2) the lack of functionality to consider spatially varying material properties in FE software.