ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the connection between structural reliability and safety factors. As PalleThoft-Christensen and Michael J. Baker note, Until fairly recently there has been a tendency for structural engineering to be dominated by deterministic thinking, characterized in design calculations by the use of specified minimum material properties, specified load intensities and by prescribed procedures for computing stresses and deflections. In engineering practice, for many years the safety factor as a deterministic value was considered to be a kind of a critical number marking the “failure or no failure” boundary to be adhered to rigorously. Any, even minor, decrease of the safety factor would lead to jeopardizing the structure, while complying strictly with its value would guarantee a satisfactory level of reliability. The probability of failure is the main numerical measure of structural reliability. The failure of a structure is a random event of realization of one of its damage states.
