RELIABILITY ANALYSIS OF REINFORCED MASONRY WALLS

1. B. Pirzada¹, J.L.Dawe² and Y.Liu³

1. ¹Visiting Professor; ²Professor; ³Ph.D CandidateDepartment of Civil EngineeringUniversity of New Brunswick P.O. Box 4400

   Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3

   Canada Pirzada@unb.ca

ABSTRACT

A new methodology is presented here to estimate the systems reliability of reinforced masonry walls subjected to out of plane normal loading. The concept of yield line theory combined with linear programming is implemented to investigate the collapse patterns of a wall panel modeled as a plastic slab. The safety margins related to the most dominant failure modes are then entered into systems reliability analysis and an overall reliability index is computed.

Key words: Masonry wall; Yield Line Theory; Finite Element; FOSM Reliability; Series Reliability.

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