Reliability assessment of tests for determining structural performance

This paper presents two case studies in which different approaches are adopted for determining reliability and compares them against the NCC structural verification method. Case Study 1: The North American Cold-formed Steel Specification, in its latest revision, has introduced a method for the determination of the capacity factor, when tests are used to determine structural performance. It was based on reliability principles and provided a closed form solution for the capacity factor. This approach is compared with various Australian methods for the same problem. Case Study 2: The Australia New Zealand Cold-formed Steel Standard does not currently provide design guidance for welding of G550 steel. The NCC approach is used to determine the appropriate capacity factor for welding of G550 steel based on available Australian test data.