Course content

Safety is a principle requirement for engineering structures. This course aims to provide students the basic understanding, skills and tools for the evaluation of safety in structural and civil engineering and contains the following main topics: Practical application of probability theory – probabilistic representation of relevant engineering phenomena as loads and material resistances. Integration of new information in probabilistic modelling – Rule of Bayes (probability updating). Introduction to classical and structural reliability theory and its application to practical engineering problems. System Reliability. Structural Code Concepts, Code Calibration. Re-evaluation of the safety of existing structures. Aspects of quality control. Teaching and learning in the course will be aligned to practical structural and civil engineering problems in order to illustrate the theoretical content and demonstrate its relevance and applicability.

Learning outcome

General competence: - The student will gain a basic understanding of and a general awareness on safety aspects in structural and civil engineering, and will be able to judge whether it is necessary to account for uncertainties in engineering problems. - When simplified deterministic procedures are applied, the student can critically reflect the implications of the simplifications. - With basic understanding the student will be able to ask the right questions also for more advanced problems and might consult experts for their solution. Knowledge: - The students will get knowledge about general safety related requirements in structural and civil engineering and how to assess whether these requirements are met. Skills: - Formulate simple probabilistic models that represent relevant engineering phenomena. - Be able to extract new information from measurements and data and integrate this information in existing probabilistic models. - Define adverse events (like failure or malfunction) in terms of limit states and assess the probability of these adverse events. - Analyse system effects in the context of structural reliability. - Perform the reliability based calibration of structural codes. - Approach advanced and exceptional engineering problems.

Digital competence: Programming with Python, optimization, Monte Carlo simulation, iterative solutions, simple object oriented approaches.

Sustainability competence: The course serves to give the students appropriate skills to design safe and cost-effective structures.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures and exercises, and exercise classes. The learning content will be aligned to real structural and civil engineering problems as e.g. the discussion of safety aspects of typical mechanical problems that had been treated e.g. in Mechanics 1 and 2. Examples from real consulting projects will be discussed in the lectures and in the exercises. Many examples will be directly taken from previous mechanics courses. The exercises will introduce the use of basic software as e.g. python, MATLAB or EXCEL for solving more demanding problems. Approved exercises will be the precondition for participating the final written exam.

Compulsory assignments

• Exercises

Recommended previous knowledge

TMA4245 Statistikk, TKT4116 Mekanikk 1, TKT4122 Mekanikk 2, TBA4125 Prosjektering, TKT4240 Bygningsmaterialer.

Course materials

Text book will be decided at the start of the course. Lecture notes, compendium.