Dynamic reliability of structures: the example of multi-grid composite walls

Based on damage accumulation of multi-grid composite walls, a method of dynamic reliability estimations is proposed. The multi-grid composite wall is composed of edge frame beam, edge frame columns, grid beams, grid columns and filling blocks. The equations including stiffness, shear forces at filling blocks cracking and multi-grid composite walls yielding, ultimate displacement, and damage index are obtained through tests of 13 multi-grid composite wall specimens. Employing these equations in reliability calculations, procedures of dynamic reliability estimations based on damage accumulation of multi-grid composite walls subjected to random earthquake excitations are proposed. Finally the proposed method is applied to the typical composite wall specimen subjected to random earthquake excitations which can be specified by a finite number of input random variables. The dynamic reliability estimates, when filling blocks crack under earthquakes corresponding to 63% exceedance in 50 years and when the composite wall reach limit state under earthquakes corresponding to 2-3% exceedance in 50 years, are obtained using the proposed method by taking damage indexes as thresholds. The results from the proposed method which show good agreement with those from Monte-Carlo simulations demonstrate the proposed method is effective.