A reliability-based investigation into ductility measures of RC beams designed according to fib Model Code 2010

A reliability-based investigation into the ductility measures for reinforced concrete (RC) beams designed according to the current fib Model Code for Concrete Structures 2010 is presented in this paper. Based on the ductility ratio (= ratio of strain in tensile rebar to yield stress of steel), a limit state to ensure adequate ductility in RC beams is proposed. Results show that the ductility ratio generally follows a right-skewed distribution, and due to variability in the material properties and model error, there is high variability in the strain ductility. This high variability in the ductility ratio leads to a high probability of non-ductile behaviour for RC beam designs based on the code. This is more pronounced for normal-strength concrete and grade S500 steel. Based on a target probability taken from the literature, a modification to the allowable neutral axis depth advised by the code is proposed. The results presented in this paper indicate that more reliability-based studies of the safety factors provided by fib Model Code 2010 are needed in order to ensure adequate ductility in RC beams.