RESUMO Este artigo apresenta uma nova avaliação da conformidade dos concretos atualmente produzidos no Brasil. Ela está pautada em resultados de ensaios de resistência à compressão axial de mais de vinte e sete mil corpos de prova de concretos moldados in loco, no ato de seu recebimento, em diferentes obras do país. Os resultados mostram que parte do concreto produzido no Brasil não alcança a resistência característica (fck) prevista em projeto, e que o percentual de amostras não conformes tende a ser superior a 5%. Este estudo também evidencia que os concretos produzidos nas regiões Sul e Centro-Oeste apresentam menor variabilidade que aqueles produzidos nas demais regiões do país. Estes resultados reforçam a importância de um controle rigoroso na fabricação e no recebimento do concreto visando diminuir a ocorrência de não conformidades.

ABSTRACT This paper presents a new evaluation of the strength compliance of concretes produced in Brazil. It is based on experimental results of over twenty-seven thousand concrete samples from different parts of the country. Results show that a significant part of Brazilian concrete do not reach the characteristic strength (fck) specified in design, and the percentage of nonconforming samples tend to be higher than 5%. This study also reveals the concrete produced in the South and Midwest regions have less variability than the ones produced in the other regions of the country. These results emphasize the importance of a rigorous control in manufacturing and reception of concretes in order to reduce the nonconforming cases.

In recent years, new, intelligent and efficient sampling techniques for Monte Carlo simulation have been developed. However, when such new techniques are introduced, they are compared to one or two existing techniques, and their performance is evaluated over two or three problems. A literature survey shows that benchmark studies, comparing the performance of several techniques over several problems, are rarely found. This article presents a benchmark study, comparing Simple or Crude Monte Carlo with four modern sampling techniques: Importance Sampling Monte Carlo, Asymptotic Sampling, Enhanced Sampling and Subset Simulation; which are studied over six problems. Moreover, these techniques are combined with three schemes for generating the underlying samples: Simple Sampling, Latin Hypercube Sampling and Antithetic Variates Sampling. Hence, a total of fifteen sampling strategy combinations are explored herein. Due to space constrains, results are presented for only three of the six problems studied; conclusions, however, cover all problems studied. Results show that Importance Sampling using design points is extremely efficient for evaluating small failure probabilities; however, finding the design point can be an issue for some problems. Subset Simulation presented very good performance for all problems studied herein. Although similar, Enhanced Sampling performed better than Asymptotic Sampling for the problems considered: this is explained by the fact that in Enhanced Sampling the same set of samples is used for all support points; hence a larger number of support points can be employed without increasing the computational cost. Finally, the performance of all the above techniques was improved when combined with Latin Hypercube Sampling, in comparison to Simple or Antithetic Variates sampling.

Este artigo apresenta uma investigação da segurança de pilares mistos preenchidos de seção circular, dimensionados segundo a norma brasileira NBR 8800:2008. Esta investigação é feita com base na comparação de previsões normativas com a resistência obtida em 32 ensaios experimentais, bem como na comparação com as normas americana e européia correspondentes. O erro de modelo das equações teóricas de resistência destas normas é determinado. Uma análise de covariância é realizada para verificar tendências das equações de resistência. O estudo mostra que o modelo de resistência utilizado na norma brasileira é compatível com as normas estrangeiras, em termos de tendenciosidade e variância. O estudo revela uma margem de segurança adicional da ordem de 10% na NBR8800, quando removidos os coeficientes parciais de segurança. Uma análise de confiabilidade é realizada para 3888 configurações de pilar, resultando em índices de confiabilidade que refletem a segurança do universo de pilares cobertos pelas normas. O estudo mostra que a norma brasileira apresenta índices de confiabilidade compatíveis com as normas estrangeiras.

This paper presents an investigation of the safety of circular concrete-filled steel columns designed according to Brazilian building code NBR 8800:2008. The investigation is based on a comparison of code provisions to column strength obtained in 32 experimental tests, and on a comparison to provisions of the equivalent American and European codes. The modeling error of theoretical code resistance models is evaluated. An analysis of covariance is performed in order to identify tendencies of these models. The study reveals that the resistance model used in the Brazilian code is compatible with foreign codes, in terms of bias and variances. The study reveals an additional safety margin of the order of 10% for the NBR8800 code, when partial safety factors are removed. Reliability analysis is performed for 3888 column configurations, resulting in reliability indexes that cover the building codes application spectrum. The study shows that the Brazilian code presents reliability indexes which are compatible with foreign codes.