Reliability interpretation of redundancy on design and seismic behaviour of steel conveyors

ABSTRACT This study investigates the effect of redundancy incorporation as static indeterminacy and possibility to utilise alternative load paths in design and seismic behaviour of steel truss bridge conveyors by conducting complementary reliability assessments. The results could be supportive in adjusting the degree of indeterminacy, especially for long structures, to convince the design goals. It is conceived that the design approach with lower indeterminacy donates to less structural weight in addition to a bit more fundamental period contributing to less earthquake-induced demands and easily controllable lateral drifts in the end reference points which are very crucial in view of connecting to the adjacent structures. On the other hand, providing more indeterminacy in conveyor design could bring about more ductility, nonlinear displacement and earthquake energy dissipation as well as closer nonlinear behavioural parameters to the amounts recommended by the design code. In reliability assessments by increasing the degree of indeterminacy, the failure probability is reduced which contributes to the design with higher reliability indexes and higher collapse safety margin and it is expected that the incorporation of redundancy effects would be more perceivable by providing models with more redundancy discrepancy.