BIM–based time-varying system reliability analysis for buildings and infrastructures

In recent decades, building information modelling (BIM) technology has been rapidly developed and applied widely in the building industry. Although BIM technology is crucial for the whole design, construction, operation, and maintenance life cycle of building structures, BIM-based infrastructure time effect analysis still has limitless potential. Nevertheless, the current BIM-based study on time effect focuses mostly on cost and schedule analyses for buildings. The assessment of infrastructure places greater emphasis on component level evaluation and ignores how components affect system safety. In this paper, a BIM-reliability integrated technology for time-varying and system analysis of structural safety is developed. In the developed framework, parameters information for calculating component reliability are first extracted from the BIM model. The BIM model is then transformed into a topology structure and based on the transformed structure, the risk assessment is conducted through stochastic approaches. The suggested framework is demonstrated using two different cases: a long-term corrosion impact analysis example of an underground pipeline network and a short-term seismic load analysis instance of a four-layer frame. In the short-term analysis, the structural analysis is performed by integrating REVIT-Dynamo and OpenSees, taking into account the randomness of the material properties and the fabrication size. The design optimization can be carried out by comparing the reliability of inter-storey displacement under seismic load in different design schemes, and the system failure probability is more sensitive to the changes in the failure probability of each floor. In the long-term analysis, the time-varying reliability and importance index of each pipe during its lifetime are calculated using the transformed topology algorithm and the stochastic corrosion model. It is found that the BIM-reliability integrated technology can effectively evaluate the impact of time effect on the safety of the structures and is of great significance for structures with unknown working environment and working conditions.