Abstract The conventional approach for evaluating bridge reliability assumes that the resistance or failure of a pair of adjacent steel girders is either fully correlated or independent. The effect of the spatial dependence of corrosion growth on the system reliability of steel girder bridges has not been thoroughly investigated. To fill this knowledge gap, the Gaussian, Gumbel, Clayton, and Frank copulas are used to model the corrosion growth dependence. The reliability estimates of the girder system under these copulas are compared, considering a low, medium, and high degree of dependence. The variable-based power-law model and Gamma process-based model are used to depict the uncertain evolution of corrosion over time. The proposed approach is exemplified using a steel girder system. The analysis results indicate that the difference in reliability estimates, based on the copula selected to model the spatial dependence of corrosion growth, can be non-trivial.

中文翻译：

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依赖腐蚀增长的钢梁桥的可靠性

摘要 评估桥梁可靠性的传统方法假设一对相邻钢梁的阻力或破坏是完全相关的或独立的。腐蚀增长的空间依赖性对钢梁桥系统可靠性的影响尚未得到彻底研究。为了填补这一知识空白，使用 Gaussian、Gumbel、Clayton 和 Frank copula 来模拟腐蚀增长的相关性。考虑到低、中和高度的相关性，比较了这些联结下的大梁系统的可靠性估计。基于变量的幂律模型和基于 Gamma 过程的模型用于描述腐蚀随时间的不确定演变。所提出的方法以钢梁系统为例。