The primary objective of this thesis is to show the significant role which statistics and probability theory can play in the design of various aspects of a building (i. e. the lifts, the structure, the water supply, the thermal environment, the fire protection etc.). It is shown that the operational performance of the majority of these building subsystems is dependent upon one or more factors which are probabilistic in nature, and consequently should not be considered deterministically as is commonly the practice in present design codes. These so called probabilistic approaches to design allow the performance of any design solution to be quantified as the frequency, or probability of inadequacy. The second objective of this thesis is to consider the use of two rational design procedures to aid the designer in choosing the desired probabilities of inadequacy or failure for each subsystem of the building. The first method, which was developed during the course of this research project, balances the operational performance of all the various subsystems of the building using the criterion that the frequency of inadequacy of each subsystem should be inversely proportional to the consequences of inadequacy. This design criterion produces a building which has a satisfactory overall performance from the users view point. The second rational method considered in this thesis is the use of classical cost benefit techniques to determine the optimal economic level of performance for each of the probabilistic subsystems. This design method requires that capital and running costs must be considered in addition to the expected losses should inadequacy of the subsystem occur.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:457316 |
| Date | January 1975 |
| Creators | Green, M. F. |
| Publisher | University of Surrey |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/847472/ |
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