Safety Determination of Structural Components Made With Metakaolin

Abstract

Structural safety estimation is a task of paramount importance, especially in recent situations where adding additives to improve the properties of concrete has become the order of the day. In this paper, the stochastic variables were identified; the variables obtained were obtained under laboratory experiments and assumed to be stochastic. Python programming language was used in Jupyter Notebook (code translator), and math was imported as a Python library for the evaluation of safety indices and failure probabilities of reinforced concrete beams produced with metakaolin. The obtained geometric indices were found to be 3.2967, 3.6428, 3.219, and 3.0176, and the failure probabilities corresponding to the estimated geometric indices were 1.65E-3, 1.83E-3, 1.62E-3, and 1.51E-3 for reinforced concrete beams produced with 0%, 10%, 20%, and 30% replacements of cement with metakaolin, respectively. The values are less than the target safety index of 4.7 for beams in bending or flexure and 3.7 for beams in shear, with tolerable risk levels (10–3) for structural elements. The results showed that the structural elements are unsafe and can lead to a severe accident compared to the prediction of structural performance according to the specifications of the Joint Committee on Structural Safety (JCSS) (2001).