Reliability-based Design in Soil and Rock Engineering: Enhancing Partial Factor Design Approaches

This book contains probabilistic analyses and reliability-based designs (RBDs) for the enhancement of Eurocode 7 (EC7) and load and resistance factor design (LRFD) methods. An intuitive perspective and efficient computational procedure for the first-order reliability method (FORM, which includes the Hasofer–Lind reliability index) is explained, together with discussions on the similarities and differences between the design point of EC7/LRFD and RBD-via-FORM.

Probability-based designs with respect to the ultimate and serviceability limit states are demonstrated for soil and rock engineering, including shallow and deep foundations, earth-retaining structures, soil slopes, 2D rock slopes with discontinuities, 3D rock slopes with wedge mechanisms, and underground rock excavations. Renowned cases in soil and rock engineering are analyzed both deterministically and probabilistically, and comparisons are made with other probabilistic methods.

This book is ideal for practitioners, graduate students and researchers and all who want to deepen their understanding of geotechnical RBD accounting for uncertainty and overcome some limitations and potential pitfalls of the evolving LRFD and EC7. Solutions for the book’s examples are available online and are helpful to acquire a hands-on appreciation: https://www.routledge.com/9780367631390.

Dr Bak Kong Low is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and for 35 years taught at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. In 2019, he received the Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award from ASCE.