ABSTRACT
Partial safety factors within modern codes are derived to ensure that the desired reliability is achieved for different types of structures and load situations. For a limited set of structures with similar characteristics it can be reasonable to optimize the partial safety factors more accurately. Also, lowering the target reliability level for aged structures or accounting for load and resistance situations which may have changed since the design of the bridge may justify the recalibration process.
Taking this into consideration, this work shows an example of the practical application of the partial safety factor-recalibration process for an existing single span steel railway bridge. The bridge is property of the Austrian Federal Railways and located in Lower Austria. At first a probabilistic analysis of the bridge shows the development of the reliability level for a time span of 100 years taking deterioration due to corrosion into account. The recalibration process of the partial safety factors is done for ultimate limite state with respect to different target reliability levels https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> T https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780429227196/8b5c0a5d-ddea-4c88-8eea-7152f7afb008/content/eq5090.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> for the given structure. The outcome is a diagram that can be used e.g. by local engineers to select adequate partial safety factors for the assessment of existing bridges without the need for a full probabilistic analysis.
