DOI: 10.36347/sjet

Pages: 105-107

Nigeria is a developing country where abandoned building projects abound. Knowing the reliability status of such abandoned buildings now becomes a task of paramount importance to both civil and structural engineers to avoid loss of lives or damage of properties in the event of collapse. In this paper, the result of probabilistic service life appraisal of an abandoned building project is discussed. The service life appraisal parameters employed in the reliability prediction were obtained from the non-destructive test conducted on the Laboratory Block at College of Continuing Education, University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State Nigeria. The period that elapsed between the project commencement and abandonment is a time dependent process and Gamma distribution model was the method invoked in the service life appraisal. The obtained value of performance index (3.00) was compared with the code specified values for the various classes of structural members involved and was found to be less than 4.9 for beams in flexure, 4.5 for slabs, 3.6 for beams in shear and 3.9 for compression members subjected to a combination of both dead and imposed loads. The structure is therefore, not safe and may result in fatal accidents and damage of properties on collapse