An engineer provides information (design drawings, definitions of the quality of material) which can be used to build a structure. However, the quality of the construction work depends on many factors. For example, the quality and supervision of construction work vary considerably in practice. Another source of uncertainty is associated with the variability of the quality of the material. The objective of this activity is to estimate the variability of the strength and deformation capacity of structural components due to human factors and due to variability in quality of materials which are available on the market. A series of cyclic test will be performed on reinforced concrete columns and walls, which will all be nominally the same, but constructed by different construction companies with different levels of supervision. The variability of performance of the columns will provide information which will be useful in the seismic risk assessment of structures and consequently in the design of new or risk assessment of existing buildings.
All experiments were conducted at Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute (ZAG).