Probabilistic development of shear strength model for reinforced concrete squat walls

In order to reconcile the larger scatter and avoid the biased estimate from deterministic predictions for the shear strength of reinforced concrete (RC) squat structural walls, a probabilistic shear strength model is developed in this paper based on the strut‐and‐tie model and the generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) method. The strut‐and‐tie model is used to derive an appropriate function form for the probabilistic shear strength model, where four unknown model parameters (e.g. k₁, k₂, k₃ and k₄) are defined carefully to guarantee them having a clear physical‐based meaning so that the corresponding prior distribution ranges can be specified reasonably. Then, the GLUE method is adopted to estimate the posterior cumulative distribution of k₁, k₂, k₃ and k₄ with an available experimental database. Furthermore, to demonstrate the stability of the estimated posterior cumulative distribution, the sensitivity of three major aspects in GLUE method is investigated. Finally, based on the estimated cumulative distribution of k₁, k₂, k₃ and k₄, the developed probabilistic shear strength model is simplified as a mean prediction model and a standard deviation prediction model for facilitate using in engineering practice. Therefore, with the developed probabilistic shear strength model, not only can the squat structural walls be designed in confidence, but the accuracy of those deterministic predictions can be evaluated in a probabilistic manner. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.