Structural reliability assessment of existing reinforced concrete wharves in NS by considering the impact of climate change

钢筋混凝土码头由于暴露在环境中，随着时间的推移而恶化。设计规范在预测结构的使用寿命时考虑了钢筋混凝土的劣化。然而，这些预测是基于历史数据，并不一定能解释新斯科舍省海岸由于气候变化而导致的海洋化学和环境暴露的预测变化。该合作伙伴关系的目标是开发一个基于可靠性的稳健分析框架，通过考虑环境变化对码头结构恶化机制的影响来预测现有钢筋混凝土码头的使用寿命，并应用开发的工具来检查哈利法克斯港现有码头的使用寿命。提出的工具将通过概率分析框架来考虑材料特性的空间变异性（即现有码头混凝土特性的随机性）和载荷的随机性（即施加载荷的随机性）。该工具将在一个用户友好的独立计算机应用程序中编程，可由标准工程师使用。拟议中的研究对新斯科舍省和加拿大有三方面的影响：了解环境变化对码头结构安全的影响，有助于提出新的设计措施，延长码头的使用寿命，从而优化码头的成本-寿命分析（经济），量化现有码头的结构安全，有助于码头用户了解运营风险（社会）。预测结构维修需求有助于优化资源，减少与码头修复项目相关的碳足迹（环境）。

Reinforced concrete wharves deteriorate with time due to environmental exposure. Design codes account for the deterioration of reinforced concrete in predicting the service life of structures. However, these predictions are based on historical data that do not necessarily account for the projected change in the ocean chemistry and environmental exposure in the shores of Nova Scotia due to Climate Change. The goal of this partnership is to develop a reliability-based robust analytical framework to predict the service life of existing reinforced concrete wharves by considering the impact of the changing environment on the deterioration mechanism of wharf structures, and to apply the developed tool to examine the service life of existing wharves at the Port of Halifax. The proposed tool will account for the spatial variability of the material characteristics (i.e. randomness in the concrete properties in existing wharves), and the stochastic nature of loads (i.e. randomness in the applied loads) through a probabilistic framework of analysis. The tool will be programmed in a user-friendly standalone computer application that can be used by standard engineers. The proposed research has a three-fold impact on Nova Scotia and Canada: understanding the impact of changing environment on the structural safety of wharves helps in proposing new design measures to extend the service life of wharves, and hence, optimize the cost-life analysis of the wharf (economic), quantifying the structural safety of existing wharves helps wharf users in understanding the risk involved in operation (societal), predicting the need for structural repairs helps in optimizing the resources and reduce the carbon footprint associated with wharf rehabilitation projects (environmental).