Evaluating the Reliability of Structural Masonry Elements Using the Response Surface Technique

In historical buildings, the load bearing capacity is often doubtful due to deterioration processes or external actions. To decide whether or not these structural elements need to be strengthened, a probabilistic method is searched for. Indeed, as none of the parameters is known exactly material characteristics, imposed loads due to the new or altered destination of the building, uniformity of material properties, ...a probabilistic method is developed. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the applicability of probabilistic methods for the safety assessment of historical masonry constructions. This objective is illustrated on a masonry shear panel under horizontal loading. A 2D non-linear finite element model is used for the numerical analysis. The outcome of the numerical experiments provide the input for the response surface method. The surface is fit into the limit state function, that allows the probability of failure to be calculated using a First-Order Reliability Method and the Monte Carlo method.