Guang Zou (ESR5) and Giulia Milana (ESR6) are attending the course on “Theory of Structural Reliability” imparted at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in Imperial College London. The course is delivered via a combination of lectures and tutorials from 25 Jan to 21 Mar 2016 (2pm-5pm every Monday). Dr Peter Stafford, senior lecturer in Imperial College, covers the former 7 lectures, while Professor Haig Gulvanessian, who has been strongly involved in development of EU and UK codes, shares his experiences in structural code development and robustness design in the last 2 lectures. The 27 hours of lectures cover the following topics:
- Introduction to Structural Safety
- Fundamentals of Probability Theory for Structural Reliability
- Fundamentals of Reliability Theory I (limit-state functions and formulation of reliability problem)
- Fundamentals of Reliability Theory II (First Order Reliability Method)
- Sampling methods (Monte Carlo simulation and importance sampling)
- Reliability of Structural Systems
- Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of engineering structures
- Eurocode (EN 1990): Basis of Structural Design
- Robustness and Progressive Collapse
The course addresses the theoretical background needed by TRUSS to address structural safety issues in their projects. Students are introduced to the fundamental concepts and principles of structural safety for assessing both new and existing structures. Quantitative approaches of structural reliability theory are revised and related to codes of practise. The potential of probabilistic reliability engineering is revealed. The course is strongly relevant to both Guang and Giulia’s projects. After the course, they shall be able to apply reliability theory, simulation techniques and life-cycle analysis methods to integrity management of marine passenger ships and unloaders.
