ABSTRACT
Increasingly there is a need for estimating the likely lifetime of already deteriorating infrastructure. To do so rationally, both for sound economic decisionmaking and for structural engineering assessment, requires knowledge of or estimates of the rate of deterioration with time. Since there is a degree of uncertainty associated with such estimates and appropriate framework for decision making is structural reliability theory (Melchers 1998, Stewart and Melchers 1997, Ang and Tang 2007). However, the biggest challenge remaining is that the models for deterioration such as for corrosion of metals currently available are of relatively poor quality, although better modelling has been achieved in recent years. This applies both to general corrosion as a function of time and to pitting corrosion (Melchers 2004, Melchers 2005a).
