PRESENTATION: Structural Reliability as a Basis for Structural Design

When: 5:30pm Tuesday 12^th December 2012

ABSTRACT:

Structural Reliability as a Basis for Structural Design - the challenge of developing modern codified design formats.

In this lecture the principle basis of modern structural design codes is revisited. A general design problem is formulated as a decision problem, and it is demonstrated how structural reliability methods can accommodate uncertainties in a consistent matter. A direct relationship to the safety format of modern design codes is developed and the general outline for reliability based code calibration is discussed in connection with some relevant examples.

Short CV: Jochen Khler:

Dr. Khler is Associated Professor for Structural Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim since 2012. After graduating at the Technical University of Karlsruhe in Civil Engineering, Dr. Khler started his professional career in the Group of Risk and Safety, chaired by Michael H. Faber, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 2001. His research has been related to the development of probabilistic models for the strength and stiffness properties of structural timber, leading to implications for timber grading, long term load bearing behaviour of timber structural elements, the development of a hierarchical model for the spatial variation of timber material properties and the load bearing behaviour of timber connections. The outcome from this research forms the basis of the JCSS Probabilistic Model Code for Timber structures issued in 2006 (www.jcss.ethz.ch).