A Probabilistic Fracture Mechanics Approach for Structural Reliability Assessment of Space Flight Systems

Download or read book A Probabilistic Fracture Mechanics Approach for Structural Reliability Assessment of Space Flight Systems written by M. Creager and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A probabilistic fracture mechanics approach for predicting the failure life distribution due to subcritical crack growth is presented. A state-of-the-art crack propagation method is used in a Monte Carlo simulation to generate a distribution of failure lives. The crack growth failure model expresses failure life as a function of stochastic parameters including environment, loads, material properties, geometry, and model specification errors. A stochastic crack growth rate model that considers the uncertainties due to scatter in the data and model misspecification is proposed. The rationale for choosing a particular type of probability distribution for each stochastic input parameter and for specifying the distribution parameters is presented. The approach is demonstrated through a probabilistic crack growth failure analysis of a welded tube in the Space Shuttle Main Engine. A discussion of the results from this application of the methodology is given.