To fully utilise the advantageous durability properties of SHCC in structural applications, a performance-based durability design approach is required, which accounts for the uncertainty of material resistance and environmental loads. The DuraCrete concept for ordinary crackfree concrete, in which the input parameters for an analytical formula describing chloride ingress are quantified stochastically, provided a rational basis for the durability design concept presented in this paper.
However, for new materials such as SHCC much less information on chloride ingress is available that for ordinary concrete. This results in additional uncertainty due to a lack of information.
In the presented concept, this is accounted for with the help of fuzzy probability theory, allowing a transparent quantification of the influence of information deficit on input parameters as well as the computed chloride profiles and failure probabilities. In an example this is demonstrated for a steel reinforced SHCC member exposed to a marine environment, where the significant information deficit is clearly reflected in the results. However, this uncertainty may be reduced with targeted research based on the results of sensitivity analyses identifying the parameters most critical for the result uncertainty.