The study on the element safety margin of brittle failure reinforced concrete columns

The entire beam hinging collapse mode is the most desirable collapse mode. The story collapse of the structure, especially the structure including brittle failure columns, is most undesirable. The system reliability is concerned with the failure element performance. Then the structural reliability with the ductile failure elements can be analyzed using the last hinging collapse mode, but the structural reliability with the brittle failure elements should be analyzed by the step-by-step method. In this paper, the story collapse reliability of the structure with brittle failure elements is investigated and the element safety margin of brittle failure elements is proposed to be βMQ = 1.5 for column ductile failure. © 2010 The Society of Materials Science, Japan.