ABSTRACT
The theory of durability design is in principle based on the theory of safety (or structural reliability) traditionally used in structural design. In this context safety denotes the capacity of a structure to resist, with a sufficient degree of certainty, the occurrence of failure in consequence of various potential hazards to which the structure is exposed. The theory, however, has hitherto been confined more particularly to problems in which time plays only a subordinate part. Now the use of this technique is increasingly advocated for dealing also with durability and service life problems (Siemes, Vrouwenvelder and van den Beukel, 1985).
